CIMIT-Russia Project:
Avian Influenza Surveillance in Siberia

The prediction of influenza strains likely to infect humans each flu season is an important aspect of protecting public health, and is critical to the avian influenza vaccine production process. In March, 2005, CDC director Julie Gerberding labelled a possible H5N1 avian influenza pandemic as the greatest public health threat facing the world in the coming year. Given the seriousness and immediacy of the threat that avian influenza poses to world public health, and the possibility that an influenza pandemic could kill millions of people worldwide, improving the accuracy of strain prediction is an international health priority. Emerging strains of avian influenza are monitored by the sampling of domestic fowl and pigs in southeast China, which host influenza before it mutates to infect humans. International surveillance would be enhanced if the reservoirs of influenza in waterfowl of Siberia and the Artic area of Russia could be more frequently and broadly sampled on an ongoing basis. Indeed, such surveillance would improve prediction of the strains likely to infect humans each year and act as an early warning system for potentially lethal strains.

In spite of the importance of such early surveillance, world public health experts at presently conduct only limited surveillance of, and sample collection from, birds that migrate along the flyways that passes through the heart of Siberia and into China. This lack of surveillance is a result of historical disconnections between international health organizations such as the CDC and the WHO and Russian public health and research institutes, as well as competition between Russian institutes. CIMIT has used its position as a nongovernmental academic facilitator and has drawn on its sound relationships with concerned parties in the U.S., Russia and the international community to initiate a collaborative pilot surveillance effort.

This project, a collaborative effort between Drs. Alexander Shestopalov of the State Institute of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) and Dr. Michael Callahan of the Massachusetts General Hospital, involves the monitoring and quick identification of emerging strains of flu among wild waterfowl in migratory rest areas, as well as in animals in rural Siberian poultry and pig farms along the West Ural Artic Flyway. Samples taken from these animals will be sent to a WHO reference influenza laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmatory analysis by Dr. Robert Webster from the United States, who is among the world’s foremost experts on influenza. The full range of Russian influenza surveillance activities are expected to begin in mid-April at the early phase of the Northern migration from China and Korea.