Declan Butler, reporter

Last week I revealed that since summer 2005 almost no avian flu poultry isolates have gone from Indonesia to the joint network of national and international reference laboratories run by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

I therefore found it interesting that today the FAO issued a statement reiterating the policy on data sharing which it announced earlier this year. I’ve pasted its statement below.
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Back in March I reported on what we know, and don’t know, about the avian flu virus H5N1 in cats. The issue has new resurfaced with a paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases reporting avian flu in cats in northern Iraq — see my story today; “More cats found with bird flu“.

The earlier post commented on the fact that cat infections were more common than recognized:
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The latter quote is from a front-page article I’ve published in Nature tonight on what the experience of the large human cluster of avian flu cases in Indonesia says about the realities of attempting to slow the spread of, much less extinguishing at source, an emerging pandemic in the context of a developing country, with poor health infrastructure.
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I’ve posted a quick update to the maps. Obvious things to note are the large cluster of human cases in Indonesia, widely discussed in the media, and the less obvious spread of animal outbreaks, almost entirely confined to Europe, over the past two weeks. I’ll have a detailed article on the Indonesian cluster coming out in Nature tomorrow night, and will post about that then.
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Some quick pointers/quick catch up.
I’ve published tonight a piece showing the first scientific evidence of possible widespread infection of dogs with the avian flu virus H5N1; in Thailand: see “Thai dogs carry bird-flu virus, but will they spread it?”
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Just a pointer to a long article I’ve published in Nature today on the three mutations found in human cases of H5N1 in Turkey — “Alarms ring over bird flu mutations.”
It’s a follow up to last week’s article “Bird flu mutation sparks concern.”

For more avian flu news, see my flu ‘thin’ blog or sign up to its RSS feed.

Scientific American today reported on the threatened closure of Namru-2 in Indonesia (see previous post). Associated Press also report that the laboratory may now be given a stay of execution, and that this may be tied to financial terms of any vaccine produced from Indonesian viral samples.
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In tomorrow’s issue of Nature, I’ve a short exclusive on Indonesia seeking to close down Namru-2, a US military lab which has played a key role in helping build the country’s influenza surveillance and testing infrastructure.

Here’s a couple of snippets:
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