Indonesia Still Refusing To Share Flu Samples

Indonesia is demanding that an agreement is made

The World Health Organisation recently put out a statement saying that countries and organisations must make more of an effort to share bird flu samples with each other. Margaret Chan who is the Director General for the World Health Organisation says that she was behind an initiative to get more “equitable access” to any future bird flu vaccines and reiterated her stand that more cooperation was needed.

Indonesia which has been the country worst infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus is still reluctant to give the World Health Organisation all of its bird flu samples collected from humans that have been infected with the disease, because they fear that the samples will be used to make an expensive vaccine which they then will not be able to afford for their own people. Indonesia is demanding that an agreement is made that should a bird flu vaccine be developed from using their bird flu samples that they will be able to purchase it for a very affordable price.

Almost 100 people have succumbed to the bird flu virus in Indonesia and the virus has had huge economic implications for the poultry farming business in the country. The Indonesian government feels that while they are happy to provide samples to the World Health Organisation which will then be used by major drug companies to develop vaccines they must get the guarantees from these drug companies that they will get cheap vaccines.

Margaret Chan said that by sharing viruses it was possible to see how the bird flu virus is mutating and changing and thus a risk assessment strategy can be worked out. Scientists say that it is certain that at some point the bird flu virus will become easily contagious between humans and that close monitoring of any changes is essential. This year Indonesia has only given two bird flu samples to the World Health Organisation.

The major drug companies argue that their research and development costs millions and that until they know how much the vaccine will cost to develop they cannot give any concrete guarantees about prices. They argue that in any case third world countries always get drugs at a cheaper price then first world countries.

At Ukmedix News we hope that the problem is resolved as soon as possible as millions of lives could be at stake.