JAKARTA, 05 September 2008 - Indonesia hopes negotiations on the material transfer agreement for bird flu virus specimen can be rounded up at the inter-governmental meeting of WHO members in November, health minister Siti Fadillah Supari said. Indonesia hopes the agreement can be kept simple but it has to able to accommodate the interests of the developing countries, Antara news agency on Friday quoted the minister as saying.

"We wish our that property rights to the virus will receive recognition and we will have access to information on where the virus had been taken to and how it has been handled," she said here on Thursday. She said the agreement must also cover deals on benefit sharing both financially or otherwise that originate from the result of research on specimen sent by affected countries.

Talks on the mechanism of avian flu virus sharing started early in 2007 after the Indonesian government protested the unfair mechanism of virus sharing and exchange of the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN). Since then several meetings were held by members of the World Health Organization affected by the H5N1 virus aimed at formulating the framework of a fair, transparent and equal virus sharing mechanism.

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