China has shared human bird flu samples for the first time in more than a year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.
The WHO said samples taken from two people would boost efforts to track the deadly H5N1 virus as efforts to develop a vaccine become more urgent before its likely mutation into a disease that can be transmitted from human to human, sparking a global pandemic.
Currently, humans can only catch the virus from close contact with fowl and poultry.
The Chinese samples were received last night at the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, one of the WHO's collaborating laboratories.
China has previously complained that samples it sent to WHO-affiliated laboratories in 2004 were used in research that failed to acknowledge the contribution of Chinese scientists. The UN agency has apologised for the breach in protocol.
Worldwide, the virus has killed 187 people among 309 known cases since 2003, according to the WHO.
The latest victim is a girl (15) from Central Java, Indonesia's health ministry announced today.
The girl died on Tuesday after earlier handling a dead chicken that she was preparing to cook, an official said.
The girl's death takes the human death toll from the H5N1 virus to 79 in Indonesia, the highest in the world.