Last Updated

17 Jun 2003

Source: Reuters News Service, January 10, 2002.

UN Experts Oppose Smallpox Stock Destruction

GENEVA (Reuters) - UN health experts have called for delaying a 2002 deadline for destroying the world's remaining stocks of smallpox virus to give time for research into better vaccines, officials said on Thursday.

The recommendation, which has been endorsed by the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Gro Harlem Brundtland, will be put to a meeting of the executive committee of the United Nations agency next week.

The WHO general assembly, the top policy-making body of the 191-state organization, set the deadline two years ago amidst growing hopes that the killer disease, which was officially eradicated over two decades ago, would never reappear.

But the anthrax attacks in the United States late last year, following the September 11 plane hijackings, have raised the specter of disease being used as a weapon of biological warfare by extremist groups or rogue states.

Stocks of the variola virus, which causes smallpox, are needed for the development of defensive vaccines and the United States, a WHO member, has already announced it will not destroy its reserves.

"This has been an ongoing debate for years. Even before September 11 there was clear reluctance in some quarters to get rid of the remaining virus,'' said one international health official.

Officially, Russia is the only country apart from the United States to retain quantities of variola virus, but weapons experts believe other countries could also possess stocks.

Unlike anthrax, which killed five people in the United States after being delivered by mail, smallpox is highly contagious.

Although it was officially declared eradicated in 1980, experts warn smallpox could be highly dangerous if deliberately re-introduced because it can kill 30% of those infected.

The team of experts, appointed by Brundtland in 1999 at the request of the Geneva-based WHO's general assembly, said that progress had been made in improving vaccines but that more work was needed.

"The...main recommendation, therefore, was that serious consideration should be given to further extending the deadline for the destruction of variola virus,'' the WHO said in a document posted on its Web site.

Existing smallpox vaccine can have harmful side effects, which is one reason why the WHO recently reaffirmed its opposition to inoculations for people who are not working with the virus or otherwise at direct risk.

The 32-state executive committee, appointed on a rotating basis from member states, is due to meet from January 14 to 21.

It normally takes its decisions on a consensus basis and presents them as recommendations to the annual assembly held in Geneva in the spring.