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Mary Ann Benitez

But Centre for Health Protection chief is not a signatory

Leading scientists and health officials, including two from Hong Kong and six Nobel laureates, have launched a worldwide collaboration to share virus samples and information on bird flu in an effort to reduce the effects of a pandemic.

The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data was welcomed by Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP) although its head, Leung Pak-yin,  is not a signatory.

In a letter to the journal Nature  released yesterday, about 70 scientists and health officials signed in support of the  initiative.

Among the main signatories are the director of the influenza division of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Nancy Cox,  and chief executive of the California-based Bogner Organisation, Peter Bogner.

Also signing were Hong Kong's bird flu expert Malik Peiris,  recently inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, Wilina Lim Wei-ling  of the CHP's government virus unit, and Chen Hualan,  director of the China National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory  of the Ministry of Agriculture in Harbin.

'I think it is important to share data from countries,' said Professor Peiris, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza  at the University of Hong Kong.

The CHP said it 'supports any initiative to share information on avian flu so that scientists can compare one strain with another'.

Asked why controller Dr Leung did not sign, a spokesman said: 'Participation in this scientific initiative is on voluntary basis.'

Hong Kong has 'always been sharing' clinical samples, viruses and genetic sequences with other centres, he added.

The scientists said in their letter that members of the Gisaid consortium would  'share their sequence data, to analyse the findings jointly and to publish the results collaboratively'.

'Data would be deposited in the three publicly available databases participating in the International Sequence Database Collaboration as soon as possible after analysis and validation, with a maximum delay of six months,' it added.

The World Health Organisation is not involved but said it agreed with the 'spirit of the letter'.

'We certainly support that goal but we haven't seen the details of how to make that happen,' said Dick Thompson, WHO team leader on pandemic and outbreak communications.

Scientists have expressed concern about the lack of virus samples from bird flu-hit countries.

The mainland only recently acknowledged it had a bird flu death in November 2003 - two years before officially revealing infections to the WHO. It meant the death - and suspected poultry infections - preceded the ongoing H5N1 outbreaks.

The virus is known to have infected 241 people in 10 countries during the past three years, killing 141 of them. Worst affected has been Asia, the WHO said.



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