Indonesia and WHO are tense around the avian flu vaccine

Tensions between the World Health Organization (WHO) and Indonesia on sharing bird flu virus samples have not shown signs of improvement. Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari stressed that Indonesia will not give in if the WHO does not provide new rules to control the preparation of human influenza vaccines.

Speaking at the WHO meeting with 18-country health officials on the issue in Jakarta (Indonesia) yesterday (March 25), Ms. Siti Fadilah Supari said the current working cycle of WHO is unacceptable. So Indonesia will continue to not provide bird flu samples to WHO.

Live poultry is transported in Jakarta.(Photo: Reuters)

WHO has been criticized for passing samples of bird flu virus to private companies without cooperating with other countries that share the samples with WHO.

In February of this year, Indonesia stopped sending samples to WHO due to concerns that they would be used to prepare expensive vaccines that poor countries could not afford.

To alleviate the situation, Dr. David Heymann, a senior WHO official in charge of bird flu, has come up with a short-term solution to this problem: pharmaceutical companies will set aside a percentage of vaccines Avian influenza for developing countries. WHO will make sure to buy that amount of vaccine.

In the long term, WHO may help Indonesia and other developing countries establish their own vaccine production facilities. He said Indonesia's request that WHO not share virus samples for pharmaceutical companies was not a viable solution and would hinder global cooperation in the fight against bird flu.

However, the solution does not seem to be accepted by Indonesia. Speaking to reporters, Ms. Supari said she could open a cooperation center and a vaccine factory in Indonesia so that she would not need to send samples to foreign countries.

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