Print this story

Indonesia denies seeking payment for virus samples

24 April 2008, JAKARTA - An Indonesian health official, responding to recent comments by the US health secretary, today denied that Indonesia wants financial compensation if it resumes sharing its H5N1 avian influenza virus samples.

Widjaja Lukito, an adviser to Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari, said the country wants governments and pharmaceutical companies to develop a mechanism to ensure that developing countries have access to affordable pandemic influenza vaccines, the Associated Press (AP) reported today.

"There are many types of benefit programs that can be discussed. One could be a kind of revolving fund developed by pharmaceutical companies," Lukito told the AP. He also suggested that the mechanism could be a multilateral trust, financially supported by governments, vaccine producers, and individual benefactors, to ensure that vaccine production and distribution are equitable, according to the AP report.

Indonesia announced in early 2007 it had stopped sharing H5N1 virus samples with the World Health Organization (WHO). The country based its action on what it saw as a lack of access to pandemic vaccines that are produced by pharmaceutical companies in developed nations from the shared samples.

A WHO working group dedicated to solving the virus-sharing issue has met several times since the dispute arose, but has made little progress. The issue will likely surface in May at the WHO's World Health Assembly, and the working group's next formal meeting is scheduled for November, according to previous reports.