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News/Event Item
Indonesia Wants Fair Deal on H5N1 Vaccine
February 15 2007
By Achmad Sukarsono and Fitri Wulandari
Indonesia has restricted sharing bird flu strain samples overseas to ensure its own people benefit from any vaccine and to stop foreign parties "dancing over the corpses of others", the health minister told Reuters on Thursday.
In a controversial move, Jakarta last week declared it would only share its H5N1 bird flu virus samples with parties who agreed not to use them for commercial reasons, insisting it was unfair for foreign drug firms to use the samples, design vaccines, patent them and sell the product back to the country.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said in an interview that the reason why rich countries and pharmaceutical firms want access to the Indonesian strain is because it "has a better cross-protection and can be used against H5N1 strains from other countries".
© Reuters Foundation 2002
For the full article, visit:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/JAK298913.htm
Related article:
Indonesia Demands New Vaccine Rules Before Resuming Bird Flu Sample Sharing
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/15/asia/AS-GEN-Indonesia-Bird-Flu-Vaccine.php
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Winnie Mutch on 15 February 2007
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