The government Thursday blamed the "prolonged delay" in sharing bird flu samples on procedural problems faced by the WHO-assigned importer.

"The China National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory has already prepared the 20 samples as required by the WHO-designated lab of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States," a Ministry of Agriculture spokesman said.

But the US lab has not yet completed import procedures, causing an indefinite delay in the shipment of the virus, the spokesman said.

The US Embassy in Beijing was not immediately available for comment.

On Tuesday, Julie Hall, a WHO official in Beijing, said "the logistical arrangements are there to ship those viruses" and questioned the delay.

A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government is committed to sharing bird flu information and samples with the international community, and had provided five live poultry virus samples to the WHO in 2004.

But the WHO made the samples available to foreign researchers who twice published the genetic sequence and other data of four of the five samples without giving any credit to Chinese scientists, pioneers of the relevant genetic sequencing and following analysis.
 
Both the WHO and the researchers apologized to the ministry for the incidents, according to the official and Hall.

In February, the WHO and the ministry reached an agreement under which China would share bird flu samples by transferring them from the ministry's lab to WHO-linked labs.

In line with the arrangement, the ministry helped the Chinese lab complete all formalities for the export of the 20 virus samples to the CDC lab, the official said.

But the ministry's lab learned from the US lab that the US Government allows the imports of only undiagnosed samples; while those to be shipped by China are diagnosed samples whose full genetic sequencing analysis has been completed, according to the official.

For scientific research, these samples will have to undergo strict screening by the US Government before being allowed in, he said.

"It is therefore against fact for the WHO official to claim that it had completed the 'logistical arrangements' for the shipment of Chinese samples, and that the Ministry of Agriculture had failed to share the viruses that are needed for the global fight against bird flu," he said.

The official added that the ministry has insisted on dispensing with the "logistical arrangements" of the WHO.

In response to the ministry's comments, Hall said Thursday that determining who was to blame for the delayed shipment would not help.

"What is important is to have the samples shared as soon as possible," she said.

(China Daily September 8, 2006)