Asian states hampering bird flu checks - UN agency
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A top U.N. agency official accused Asian nations of blocking proper monitoring of the deadly bird flu virus by giving too few samples to scientists, but denied a charge that his own agency was failing to share specimens.
The head of the Animal Health Service of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said countries were failing to export samples of the H5N1 bird flu virus that has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003.
Scientists say tracking genetic changes in the virus is essential, since they fear it could mutate and develop into a worldwide pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people.
Joseph Domenech of the FAO denied accusations by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Michael Perdue, published in this week’s edition of science journal Nature, that his agency was not sharing samples.
“Most probably there is more misunderstanding than anything else, but at the end of the day, it is true that the strains are not circulating,” Domenech told Reuters.
“Some countries have samples, and they say they’ll send them, but they haven’t,” he added, without naming any states.
In its report, Nature said the WHO had obtained only six human samples of the virus and no infected poultry samples in the past eight months.
The report quoted Perdue, of the WHO’s flu program, as saying that FAO “hasn’t been sharing” the samples it has.
Domenech acknowledged that some Asian samples provided to domestic laboratories had explicit instructions that they not be exported without authorization.
But he rejected the assertion made in the magazine that FAO was not sharing samples.
“There are no FAO laboratories. There is no FAO deep freezer where we could put the strains,” Domenech said. “It’s impossible to imagine that FAO doesn’t want to share strains, because we don’t have strains.”
Domenech said infected nations were worried about losing control of the situation and of negative publicity. He said that Asian nations had exported only a few samples this year.
Nature quoted Perdue as saying that to overcome the problem, WHO representatives had met government officials from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to ask for poultry samples of the virus to be sent directly to it.
Domenech said that was unnecessary and reiterated that the allegations in Nature were false.
“Basically we collaborate and we cannot understand (the accusations) ... because this is totally wrong,” he said.
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