Global network to beat bird flu, By Mark Henderson

The Veterinary Laboratory Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, announced that a duck found dead in Geneva on Saturday had tested positive for the virus. The British lab is also to examine a dead swan found on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, which preliminary tests have shown to have had an H5 flu virus, though not necessarily H5N1. A duck found on the German side of the same lake was confirmed as having the disease last week.

The news comes as a group of American military scientists called for the setting up of a global network of laboratories to contain outbreaks of bird flu and other new diseases that could trigger a world pandemic.

Most of the developing countries, where dangerous new infections are most likely to emerge, lack the facilities and resources to track and treat them, according to researchers from the US Department of Defence. The absence of adequate surveillance in much of Africa, South America and Asia leaves a gap in the world’s defences against an influenza pandemic that wealthier countries need to address, they wrote in the journal Nature.

The authors, led by Jean-Paul Chretien, are all affiliated to the US military’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (GEIS), which they suggest as a model for a laboratory network.

GEIS centres in Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya and Peru have played an important part in monitoring the spread of H5N1 flu in Asia, but laboratories in seven other countries have been closed because of budget cuts and changing strategic priorities.

“It would be foolish and unreasonable for the international community to rely on the military priorities of a single country for the expanded surveillance network that is urgently needed,” Dr Chretien said.