China shares bird flu sample, first time in year-WHO

GENEVA, Jun 1 (Reuters) China has shared human bird flu samples for the first time in more than a year, giving a boost to international efforts to track the deadly H5N1 virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today.

The samples, taken from two people, were received on Thursday night at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, one of the WHO's collaborating laboratories, it said.

''They arrived last night at CDC,'' WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told Reuters in Geneva. ''We welcome it, it shows China is working with the international system of virus sharing.'' Scientists say that sharing samples of viruses, which are constantly changing, is vital to see if they have developed resistance to drugs or become more easily transmissible.

The H5N1 virus remains mainly a virus of birds, but experts fear it could change into a form easily spread from person to person and sweep around the world, sparking a pandemic which could kill millions.

China has previously complained that samples it sent to WHO-affiliated laboratories in 2004 were used in research that failed to acknowledge the contribution of Chinese scientists, in a breach of protocol for which the UN agency has apologised.

China announced in April that it had agreed to resume sharing human bird flu samples, but it has taken since then for the samples to travel, clear US customs in Los Angeles and reach Atlanta.

The WHO's annual World Health Assembly agreed last week to demands from Indonesia and other developing countries that it revamp the WHO's 50-year-old system for sharing influenza virus samples which are used to develop commercial vaccines.

It set up a working group to revise the ''terms of reference'' for WHO laboratories which analyse samples and draw up rules for sharing them with third parties such as researchers and drug companies.

The WHO will also work to ensure ''fair and equitable distribution'' of pandemic influenza vaccines at affordable prices and set up a global vaccine stockpile.

In the meantime, countries are expected to continue ''timely sharing'' of virus samples with the WHO's labs to track the virus and assess the risk of an influenza pandemic.

Worldwide, the virus has killed 187 people among 309 known cases since 2003, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

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