Of all the participating nations Indonesia is without doubt the most important

Some good news for the battle against the H5N1 bird flu virus is that Indonesia has announced that it will start to share all information that it has about bird flu cases that have occurred in the country. This will also mean that it will be sending samples to the World Health Organisation to be added to their data bank there.

Previously Indonesia had been boycotting the World Health Organisation data bank because they said that commercial companies were using the information to develop vaccines against the bird flu virus which would then be sold back to Indonesia at very high prices. They felt that this was unfair and thus they refused to hand over their samples for the last year.

The news that both China and Russia and other nations which had previously held back on submitting bird flu samples will now be participating in the World Health Organisation databank is welcomed too. The World Health Organisation has set up a web site to run its new data bank called the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data or GISAID for short.

Of all the participating nations Indonesia is without doubt the most important as it has had far more human deaths from the bird flu virus than any other nation. In fact almost 50 percent of all human deaths from the bird flu virus have occurred in Indonesia and so having it on board and participating in the data bank was in fact essential.

The setting up of this data bank and making all influenza information available to everyone was instrumental in getting the Health Minister of Indonesia to agree to send her samples. It will not be possible for scientists to track whether the bird flu virus is mutating into a potentially lethal form for humans which would be very contagious.

The influenza medication Tamiflu is still recommended by the World Health Organisation as the best way to treat the H5N1 bird influenza virus in humans.