WHO challenges China over new bird flu strain

Sick and tired. The World Health Organization (WHO) blasted the Chinese government this week for its lack of transparency in handling what is believed to be a new strain of bird flu. As with all public health problems, swift and unincumbered communication is critical to containment, but the WHO believes China is not being entirely forthright about the new “Fujian-like” strain spreading rapidly through southern China and neighboring countries. “The situation in China is quite confusing and there is some conflicting information,” said Julie Hall, the WHO’s coordinator of epidemic alert and response in China. “We really don’t know how many strains of bird flu there are in China because we have limited amounts of information shared with us by the Ministry of Agriculture and the virus samples we have asked for have not been shared.”

So far, Chinese authorities have denied that a new bird flu strain exists, despite the authoritative findings recently printed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Up to now, the bird flu viruses selected from the south share a high uniformity,” agreed Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. “There has been no marked change in the biological characteristics of the organisms.” The WHO, however, completely disagrees with this assessment, and officials there say they would like the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture to upload local bird flu gene sequences into a public data base, something it seems the Chinese government is resisting. “We need to clear up the picture and for this the sharing of information is vital,” Hall said.

-read more in this New Scientist report