| ■ Deal Reached on Bird Flu Sample Sharing | 07.05.29 |
| A deal that ensures that all countries will share samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, and that developing countries will have access to newly developed bird flu vaccines, was announced Wednesday by the World Health Organization. China and Indonesia have been reluctant to supply H5N1 samples to the WHO because of concerns that they'd be used to produce vaccines that the countries could not afford, BBC News reported. The new agreement is a "big step forward in virus sharing," said a WHO official. Currently, there are experimental vaccines based on the H5N1 virus. However, an effective vaccine would have to be based on the latest strain of the virus, BBC News reported. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt hailed the agreement. "The open and rapid sharing of influenza samples ensures that the global public health community maintains critical pandemic influenza preparedness and response activities, including the development and production of pandemic influenza vaccines," Leavitt said in a prepared statement. |