Bird flu toll mounts
2007-03-28 13:39
Jakarta, Indonesia - Indonesia announced three more human bird flu deaths on Wednesday, a day after it agreed to resume sending samples of the virus to the World Health Organisation, ending a months-long dispute that experts said risked millions of lives.
The WHO said that as part of the deal international vaccine companies wanting to use specimens from Indonesia and other poor countries for development of shots would first have to ask the nations' permission.
Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari had been refusing to share bird flu samples with the WHO because it made viruses freely available to vaccine companies. She worried her country's H5N1 strain would be used to develop shots unaffordable for poor nations in the event of a pandemic.
"Now we have the right to directly face the companies to negotiate to get what we want," Supari said, adding Indonesia would resume sending viruses immediately. "We trust WHO will not violate our trust, because this is related to the WHO's credibility."
Indonesia, the hardest hit nation by bird flu, had been sharply criticised for withholding its viruses. International scientists said that, without the latest specimens, they could not monitor the virus to see if it was mutating into a more dangerous form.
Underscoring the danger the virus poses to the country, three more people - one of them a 15-year-old boy - were confirmed to have died from the virus, officials said, bringing the number of dead in the country to at least 69.
Two victims lived on different parts of Java island, while the third died on Sumatra.
Bird flu has killed at least 169 people since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003, according to WHO. It remains hard for people and most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.
But experts fear that if the virus changes into a form easily spreadable among people it could spark a pandemic that could kill millions in countries around the world.
The announcement by Minister Supari and the WHO's top flu official said Dr David Heymann came on Tuesday after two days of talks in Jakarta between them and health officials from 18 countries.
- AP