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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Niman who wrote (31098)	5/16/2005 6:11:59 AM
From: Kailash	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

'Refusal to share' leaves agency struggling to monitor bird flu Declan Butler, Paris The WHO isn't being sent samples of deadly H5N1 virus. Tracking genetic changes in bird-flu viruses is vital for early warning of a human pandemic. But Nature has discovered that it is nearly eight months since the World Health Organization (WHO) last saw data on isolates from infected poultry in Asia. And from the dozens of patients who caught the deadly H5N1 strain this year, the WHO has managed to obtain just six samples. Affected countries are failing, or refusing, to share their human samples with the WHO's influenza programme in Geneva. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) set up a network of labs to collect animal samples last year, but it has not received any for months, and Michael Perdue, head of Animal Influenza Liaison at the WHO flu programme, complains that the FAO "hasn't been sharing" what it does have. Such lack of cooperation is a key concern as anxiety about a possible pandemic increases. Human cases are beginning to appear in clusters, which suggests that people are transmitting the virus, older people are falling ill, and milder cases are being reported. Taken together, these trends suggest that the virus is becoming less virulent and more infectious — two characteristics typical of pandemic flu strains. Nature 435, 131 (12 May 2005) \| doi: 10.1038/435131a nature.com