WHO renews call for H5N1 cooperation

The World Health Organization has renewed calls for countries with reports of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza to share samples of isolated viruses. An agreement with Indonesia, announced in May this year (Marketletter April 9), has stalled as none of the samples provided since then by the south-east Asian nation contained live virus. The other two countries to withhold virus samples were Vietnam and China. The latter country submitted isolates in June, but the France-based International Herald Tribune reports that Vietnamese samples have been held up by transportation difficulties.

Indonesia is the worst affected country by the human H5N1 virus, with 102 of the world's confirmed 319 cases. It is also the country with the worst mortality rate (79.4%) where more than 10 cases have been recorded: 81 Indonesians have died out of a world total of 192. Unlike China, Vietnam and Thailand, where the number of cases and death rates have fallen, the disease's virulence appears to have worsened in Indonesia.

David Heymann, the WHO's Assistant Director General for communicable diseases, said: "by not sharing the viruses, Indonesia is...putting in danger its own populations, because if those viruses are not freely shred with [the pharmaceutical] industry, vaccines will not contain the elements of the Indonesian infections."