WHO delays decision on smallpox virus destruction

GENEVA, May 28 (Reuters) The World Health Organisation (WHO) decided to defer recommending a new date for destroying the world's last known stockpiles of smallpox, a deadly virus whose spread was stopped nearly 30 years ago.

There exists no treatment for the disease that killed millions of people each year into the 1960s and left many more blind and scarred. Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1979 after a worldwide vaccination campaign.

The United States and Russia, which have since stored the remaining virus samples in high-security laboratories, have long resisted calls to destroy them in case smallpox is found to exist elsewhere.

Others fear the live cultures could trigger an epidemic if released and have sought tighter controls on their use.

At the WHO's annual assembly, countries were stuck on the text of a resolution aiming to set a date for destroying existing smallpox stocks and to limit tests done on the virus.

''We have worked through several meetings -- inside the room, outside the room, in front of the elevator, even in the restroom,'' Suwit Wibulpolprasert of Thailand, who chaired a working group on smallpox, told the WHO summit in Geneva yesterday.

He gave no details of the sticking points in the group meetings, which took place behind closed doors. The WHO will revisit the resolution at an executive board meeting in January.

A previous 2002 deadline for destroying smallpox had been waived by the WHO until new vaccines or treatments for smallpox were found, after the United States said it would keep stocks on hand to combat any re-emergence of the disease.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told journalists in Geneva on Monday that scientists at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta were analysing the smallpox virus to find improved ways to respond to any outbreak.

REUTERS SHB KN0844