Indonesia resumes sharing bird flu samples

Radio Netherlands

Published: Friday 22 February 2008 09:59 UTC

Jakarta - A spokesperson for the World Health Organisation (WHO) says Indonesia sent 12 bird flu samples to a WHO laboratory this week for the first time since August 2007. Jakarta stopped sharing its virus samples in December 2006 as it feared that they would be used to make vaccines that poor countries could not afford. Indonesia has not said what prompted the change in policy.

Last August, Indonesia did send two samples to the WHO to prove that the virus had not mutated after the organisation accused Jakarta of endangering world health by failing to share its samples. The WHO also said Indonesia was endangering its own population as any vaccine developed would not contain components of the variant prevalent in the country.

Bird flu is endemic in Indonesia and the country has been hardest hit by the H5N1 variant, which has a mortality rate in humans of more than 60 percent. So far, 105 Indonesians have died after being infected with H5N1, 11 of them this year alone. At present H5N1 is not easily transmissible between humans but scientists fear it could mutate into a transmissible form and spark a global pandemic and kill millions of people.