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update:Oct 16, 2006
Sharing bird flu virus samples globally
Avian influenza virus sequences will be made accessible to the entire
scientific community through an initiative of OFFLU, the joint network of
expertise on avian influenza formed by the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health
(OIE).
With this gesture
OFFLU
reiterates its call to the world's scientists,
international organisations and countries for a global sharing of virus strains
and sequences.
OFFLU
was launched by the
FAO and
OIE in April 2005. Since then, the
organisation has been mainly working on promoting its key objectives "to
exchange scientific data and biological materials (including virus strains)
within the network, and to share such information with the wider scientific
community". Under this new impetus, strains will be sent to the US National
Institutes of Health for sequencing and depositing on the free-access database,
GenBank.
On 14 March 2006, the Scientific Committee of OFFLU, made up of the world's
leading veterinarian experts on avian influenza, revised its terms of reference
to put new emphasis on the need for further collection, characterisation and
exchange of avian influenza viruses, and for the expansion of the genomic
database for animal influenza viruses.
Sharing virus strains, samples and sequences is a critical part of the
global work on the surveillance and control of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus,
and supports the preparation of human bird flu vaccines.
Editor WorldPoultry
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