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Bird Flu-Afflicted Countries Have Shared +700 Viruses With WHO Labs

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 January 2008, 03:00 CST

Countries afflicted with H5N1 avian flu sent more than 700 viruses to World Health Organization laboratories from 2003 to 2007 - and nearly a quarter of them came from Indonesia, a report released Monday reveals.

Of 734 viruses currently stored in WHO labs, 171 were provided by Indonesia, the country which for the past year has been at the centre of a standoff over access to viruses.

China, thought to be the birthplace of the H5N1 virus, has provided 22 viruses to the WHO network, 20 in 2006 and two in 2007. Its special administrative region, Hong Kong, has provided another four, according to the report posted on the WHO's avian influenza web site.

Since last February, Health Minister Dr. Siti Fadilah Supari has refused to allow specimens from Indonesian H5N1 patients to be released to laboratories in the WHO's network, complaining Indonesian viruses have been used to make vaccine the country cannot afford to buy.

The WHO needs the samples to monitor the ever-shifting H5N1 virus, to watch for mutations that might signal it is becoming more transmissible to and among humans and test whether the viruses are vulnerable or resistant to the few available anti-flu drugs.

The WHO also on occasion selects important new viruses to be used for vaccine development, providing them to pharmaceutical companies.

While Indonesia is the only country that has overtly refused to share viruses, several other affected nations and non-governmental organizations representing the interests of developing countries have lent support, backing Supari's vaccine-for-viruses campaign.

Over the past year, the WHO has led protracted discussions aimed at brokering a compromise, promising to establish a stockpile of H5N1 vaccine that could be shared with non-vaccine producing countries if the virus goes on to trigger a pandemic.

An expert group working for the WHO recommended in November that that stockpile should contain as many as 100 million doses, or enough vaccine to protect 50 million people.

Also in November, a special international working group struck to try to resolve the dispute called on WHO Director General Margaret Chan to set up a tracking system that would allow countries to follow what had been done with specimens they provided to the system.

The report, posted Monday during the first day of the WHO's annual executive board meeting, appears to be the first stab at creating such a system.

It shows that 8,763 animal and human specimens were submitted to WHO network labs, but living viruses could only be isolated from 734 of them.

Of those, the WHO recommended 13 be made into seed viruses for vaccine development. Those viruses came from China (2), Indonesia (1), Vietnam (3), Cambodia (1), Turkey (1), Hong Kong (4) and Mongolia (1).

Eight of those have been made into vaccine seed strains using reverse genetics, a patented technique in which the virus is modified in order to allow it to grow in hens' eggs. (Unmodified H5N1 viruses kill eggs.)

A total of 292 institutions - likely companies and university-based researchers - have taken possession of the vaccine seed strains made with reverse genetics. Another 46 have taken possession of unmodified H5N1 viruses provided by labs in the WHO network.

Indonesia provided more than half of all the samples - 4,774 - but only 171 of those specimens yielded viruses. Most of those specimens were provided in 2005, the first year Indonesia recorded human cases, and in 2006.

In 2007, Indonesia sent 62 specimens to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and three to the WHO's collaborating centre in Tokyo, Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases. None of the specimens sent to Japan yielded viruses, though CDC labs were able to isolate 13.

Specimens from Vietnam have yielded 375 viruses from 2004 through the end of 2007, the report shows.

All 14 countries that have reported human H5N1 cases have submitted specimens to the WHO network, as have many countries which to date have only reported poultry outbreaks.

Source: Canadian Press

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