International agencies work to resolve H5N1 names
December 13, 2006 by Grace Ibay
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Born out of the recent conflict caused by published reports of Fujian-like H5N1 strain and China’s denial of its existence, international agencies met last week to iron out the nomenclatures of H5N1.
A meeting of officials from World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) confirmed the existence of the Fujian-like strain, and the evidence presented in the PNAS publication.
Important excerpts from the WHO-FAO-OIE statement -
- A number of significant H5N1 virus groups have been identified from poultry and wild birds in China since 2004. One such identified group of viruses has been termed differently by several groups. Terms include the ‘waterfowl clade’, ‘clade 2.3′, and ‘Fujian-like’.
- It was agreed there is a need for a shared understanding and a common nomenclature for influenza A(H5N1) groups and that some of the recent confusion about the avian influenza situation in China resulted from multiple terms used to describe the same virus groups.
- Information presented at the meeting indicated that the Fujian-like strain has grown more common in parts of southern China since 2005 and has been found in poultry in Laos and Malaysia this year.
- This virus group has been documented to cause some human infection in 2005 and 2006 in China. There is no evidence to date to link the emergence of this virus group with use of poultry influenza vaccination in China.
- There has been no evidence that the Fujian-like strain is more transmissible to humans than other H5N1 viruses and no evidence that it has sparked human-to-human transmission.
Proper identification of H5N1 strains found in different regions of the world is important in effective tracking of the virus’ migration across the globe. This will also help identify, classify and group how different people groups react to the same subtypes, since I would assume this problem of different nomenclature/common names exist in other areas as well.
[Source: CIDRAP]
Tags: H5N1, Fujian-like strain, bird flu virus, China, PNAS
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] Are things getting better, or worse? The world has seen more outbreaks this month that in the last few months. A prediction of 62 million humans are going to die of flu pandemic if we’re not in the careful. South Korea had three outbreaks one after another. Later, another Korean and Vietnamses outbreaks made things worse. Jordan was also hit bad this month. France also slaughtered a lot of infected chickens. This caused concern whether the current bird flu outbreaks have really been put to control. The CDC was lambasted for not having a centralized plan for the pandemic. Now, the CDC will award a large sum of money for those who can lead to a cure for the colds. The agency actually will work with bloggers, if the parents don’t mind. More international agencies are also joining forces to combat the bird flu. [...]
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