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news.Indonesia has signed a deal with US pharmaceutical company Baxter International in order to develop a vaccine for bird flu, a move that has attracted concern.
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Under the preliminary agreement, Indonesia will provide strains of the H5N1 virus from the country and Baxter will offer technical expertise in order to produce a vaccine.
The deal has been linked to Indonesia's previous statements that it will not share samples of the H5N1 virus with foreign laboratories. Scientists believe the sharing of the strains of the virus is crucial to the creation of vaccines and also in helping them to track the progress of the disease around the world.
“We cannot share (virus) samples for free,” said a health ministry spokeswoman quoted by Reuters on Tuesday.
Indonesia is anxious about giving away information that may aid the creation of these vaccines that it would then not be able to afford, a situation that has occurred before. The government denied they were hampering bird flu research and said pharmaceutical companies would have access to the strains if they consented to use them for research purposes only.
Baxter commented that it was not involved in the Indonesian government's decision to prevent access to the HN51 influenza strains.