[Ip-health] Wall Street Journal: WHO Sets Up Database To Share Facts on Bird Flu

[thiru@keionline.org]

WHO Sets Up Database
To Share Facts on Bird Flu
New Transparency
May Ease Disputes
Over Use of Samples
By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
January 24, 2008

HONG KONG -- The World Health Organization created a public database of
information to track strains of avian-flu virus collected from around the
world, bowing to criticism that its secrecy and process for sharing
samples was unfair.

The U.N. health agency's move follows nearly two years of debate involving
scientists, government officials and the WHO over how and when to share
the samples of the bird-flu virus. The samples are critical to
understanding the virus's evolution, evaluating the risk of a pandemic and
developing vaccines.

"This is a [response] for more transparency in the global surveillance
network for influenza," said David L. Heymann, the WHO's assistant
director general for health, security and environment. Eventually,
countries will "be able to enter their own data and follow where the
viruses they provided to the system are going."


See complete coverage2 of efforts to contain avian flu, including an
interactive graphic on the science of the virus3 and a look back at major
flu epidemics4.

The WHO'S new electronic database will track all the virus samples that
countries have shared since November 2007 with the Geneva-based health
agency. It also will list which other vaccine companies or laboratories
around the world receive them. The system, currently available on the
WHO's Web site and still being developed, notes which countries donated
the viruses, test results, and other information.

As of yesterday, the database had 46 entries for viruses collected from
around the world. The most recent virus in the database, for example, was
a sample collected by a laboratory in the United Arab Emirates from a
falcon infected with bird flu that the database indicates was shared this
month with the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis,
Tennessee.

Scientists warn that mutations in the H5N1 strain of avian influenza could
potentially create a global pandemic threatening millions of human lives.
So far, the disease's impact has been muted by its inability to easily
pass from human to human. Since 2003, it has infected 351 people in more
than a dozen countries, including China, Cambodia, Indonesia and Iraq,
according to the latest tally from the WHO. Of those confirmed cases, 62%
have proved fatal.

Disputes over the sharing of avian-flu samples obtained in China was the
subject of a Wall Street Journal front-page article published in February
2006. Indonesia's health ministry at one point refused to share samples
taken on its soil after complaining that the WHO had unfairly given them
to an American vaccine company without Indonesia's permission. Since then,
Indonesia has shared some samples to be used for scientific research, but
not for vaccine development, according to a person familiar with the
matter.

The Indonesian health ministry wasn't available for comment.

Write to Nicholas Zamiska at nicholas.zamiska@wsj.com5
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