Word: viruses
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Bird flu may have fallen off the media radar lately, but that doesn't mean the threat has passed. Poultry continue to die from the H5N1 virus, and human cases have lately popped up in Egypt, Laos and Cambodia. The frontline in the war against the disease remains the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia, which has recorded more bird flu fatalities - 75 deaths, including 18 this year - than any other country. But the world only has a partial idea of what's happening with bird flu in Indonesia. That's because the country stopping sharing samples of the H5N1 virus...
...Officials in Indonesia said they were angry that viruses from their country might be used to make a commercial bird flu vaccine that they themselves would never be able to afford. They had a point; poor developing nations are often priced out of needed medicines, and they're likely to be the last in line for vaccine during a pandemic. Desperate to get the supply of samples flowing once more, WHO officials came to Jakarta in late March to broker a deal, assuring Indonesia that their samples would not be given to drug companies without the government's permission. Indonesia...
...Indonesia Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari tells TIME that there's been a lack of "goodwill" from the WHO, and that Indonesia won't share a single virus with the international community until it receives a "green light" from the WHO that Jakarta would retain commercial control of its samples. "We feel let down by the WHO," she said in an interview last Friday. "We only demand fairness...
...what it will take to get that "green light," Supari is less than specific. She says she doesn't necessarily need an agreement in "black and white" recognizing Indonesia's ownership rights, yet goes on to argue that Jakarta should have final say on any vaccines made from its viruses. For its part, the WHO has tried hard to accommodate Indonesia's objections. At a high-level meeting in Geneva late last month, the WHO raised the possibility of creating a virtual vaccine stockpile that developing countries might be able to draw upon in the event of a pandemic...
...dispute has centered on future flu vaccines that might be used from Indonesian viruses, but in reality that question could be moot. If H5N1 in Indonesia were to mutate significantly tomorrow and begin passing easily from human to human, triggering a pandemic, the virus would spread around the world rapidly. Scientists would begin working on a vaccine based on the pandemic virus, but it currently takes about six months to produce a new flu vaccine. (By contrast, the most recent influenza pandemics in 1968 and 1957 crossed the globe in about four months - and that was before widespread jet travel...