WHO executive body backs retaining smallpox stocks
Date: 18-Jan-02
Country: SWITZERLAND
Amid fears that extremist groups or rogue states could use disease as a weapon, the body supported a recent recommendation by health experts which will be sent to the WHO's annual assembly of 191 member states in May for a decision.
The assembly, the top policy-making body of the U.N. health agency, set the 2002 deadline two years ago amidst growing hopes that the killer disease - which WHO proclaimed eradicated in 1977 - would never reappear.
But the deaths of five people in the United States late last year after handling mail contaminated with anthrax showed how easily toxic agents could be turned into biological weapons.
Senior health officials from Russia and the United States, officially the only two states with variola virus stocks, took the floor to say more time was needed to develop better defensive vaccines.
"The recent terrorist events in the U.S. have regrettably confirmed that we cannot assume that the intentional release of smallpox is too remote a circumstance. A case of smallpox anywhere is a case everywhere," Dr. Kenneth Bernard, assistant U.S. surgeon-general who headed his delegation, told the talks.
"Only developing and deploying both anti-viral drugs and modern vaccines will protect all of our countries from the risk of unreported virus stores being released by terrorists," he added.
The currently available vaccine can be fatal in a small number of cases and cannot be given to people with weakened immune systems, including HIV/AIDS sufferers and transplant recipients.
Yuri Fedorov, chief of the centre of emerging infectious diseases and emergency relief operations unit at Russia's Health Ministry, also spoke in favour of extending the deadline.
The U.S. stocks are kept at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, while the Russian stocks are at the Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology, located in the Urals town of Koltsovo.
The two repositories are collaborating centres of the Geneva-based WHO, which conducts regular biosafety inspections on the strict containment of existing stocks.
Neither Russia nor the United States is currently on the 32-member board, appointed on a rotating basis.