Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

[Laidback Al]

Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

By ZAKKI HAKIM ? 1 hour ago
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) ? Indonesia sent 12 bird flu samples to a World Health Organization laboratory this week after receiving assurances its rights to any vaccines produced from them would be recognized, the health minister said.
Indonesia had been refusing to send samples to WHO since January 2007, saying poor nations needed guarantees that any pandemic vaccines developed from the virus would be affordable and available to them.
It was unclear whether Indonesia would now routinely share samples, a move that would effectively end a standoff that experts have said could jeopardize global efforts to battle bird flu.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told The Associated Press late Thursday that 12 samples from recent bird flu patients were sent on Tuesday to the WHO-affiliated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the United States.
"This is just for risk assessment," Supari said. "If they want to develop them into a seed virus they must notify us. If they make them into a vaccine our rights over (the vaccine) will be recognized." She did not elaborate.
WHO officials in Jakarta declined immediate comment on her statement.
Supari has been calling for WHO to change its 50-year-old influenza virus sharing system so that developing countries that hand over samples retain the rights to any vaccines produced from them.
Currently, poor countries are obliged to send samples to WHO, which then makes them available to pharmaceutical companies to use in vaccine production. Wealthy nations have stockpiled tons of bird flu vaccines, while Indonesia has limited supplies.
WHO and Indonesia have engaged in numerous rounds of talks trying to find a solution that would ensure developing countries have equal access to a pandemic vaccine at an affordable price.
Indonesia has recorded 105 deaths from bird, almost half the global tally, according to WHO.
Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, but health experts worry the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
Scientists have warned that Indonesia, which has millions of backyard chickens and poor medical facilities, is a potential hot spot for a global bird flu pandemic.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iHvsX7x_0-zl9F7ydDjEt38m5qUAD8UV5AEG0

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

CDC expecting H5N1 samples from Indonesia

Lisa Schnirring

Staff Writer

Feb 22, 2008 (CIDRAP News) ? An official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is a collaborating laboratory for the World Health Organization (WHO), today said Indonesia's health ministry is sending 15 H5N1 influenza samples for virus characterization, the first the country has shared since last year.

Nancy Cox, MD, chief of the CDC's influenza division, said today at a media update on the flu season that Indonesia's health minister called the CDC on Feb 20 to say the country would like to resume sending samples.

Cox said Indonesia's health ministry shipped 15 clinical samples to the CDC on Feb 22. She said the samples are from two patients whose infections were confirmed by the WHO on Feb 5 and Feb 12. The two patients were a 27-year-old woman from a Jakarta suburb who died on Feb 2 and a 15-year-old girl from another Jakarta suburb who was hospitalized with an H5N1 infection after her mother died of the disease.

"Based on past experience, the samples should arrive over the weekend or early next week," Cox said. "We expect to obtain results over the next 2 weeks."

In December 2006, Indonesia?the nation hardest hit by the H5N1 virus?stopped sending samples to WHO collaborating centers to protest pharmaceutical companies' use of the samples to develop vaccines that Indonesia said would be too expensive for developing nations to buy. A WHO group that has been meeting to resolve the virus-sharing issue failed to forge an agreement the last time it met in November.

Indonesia has shared only a few samples since the end of 2006. Last May it sent three to the WHO in advance of the World Health Assembly, but WHO officials later said the specimens contained no viable viruses.

Indonesia also sent a sample to the CDC lab in August to show that an outbreak of human cases on the island of Bali did not involve a mutated strain.

Sari Setiogi, a spokeswoman for the WHO, told CIDRAP News today that the WHO has not received any details from Indonesia about the samples it is sharing and could not confirm the development.

Siti Fadilah Supari, Indonesia's health minister, said yesterday that the samples it sent are meant only for risk assessment, according to a report from the Associated Press (AP). "If they want to develop them into a seed virus they must notify us. If they make them into a vaccine our rights over [the vaccine] will be recognized," she told the AP.

Supari's announcement came at the end of a tumultuous week regarding the country's stance on sharing its H5N1 samples. Earlier this week, media outlets reported that Supari published a book alleging that the United States intended to produce a biological weapon with the H5N1 virus and the WHO was conspiring to profit from H5N1 vaccines.

Details about the book, titled Time for the World to Change: God is Behind the Avian Influenza Virus, were given in a Feb 8 press release from Indonesia's health ministry. However, the release did not list a publisher for the 182-page book.

Officials from the US State Department and WHO denied the claims Supari apparently made in her book, the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald reported yesterday.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reportedly ordered Supari to recall copies of her book, though he had authored its introduction, according to Morning Herald reports.

However, at a meeting with health ministry officials on Feb 20, Yudhoyono said he supported Supari's demand for fair international virus-sharing policies, according to a report from Reuters.

"We certainly need to form a partnership with WHO and friendly nations. We can only proceed if we agree on building and implementing a fair cooperation framework," he said at a news conference, according to Reuters.

See also:
Feb 8 Indonesian health ministry press release

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

Indonesia says H5N1 samples show no signs of mutation

Wed Mar 5, 2008 6:21am EST
HONGKONG/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Bird flu virus samples that Indonesia sent to a World Health Organisation laboratory last month have not shown signs of any mutation, a health ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
Scientists need to share and analyze H5N1 virus samples to see if they have mutated to become more easily passed between people as that could mean the start of a pandemic that can kill millions of people.
Such analyses are also needed in the making of vaccines, a chief weapon in the fight against a pandemic.
"CDC has received the samples and run tests on the samples. The result is it is still H5N1. It hasn't mutated. Meaning it is endemic among fowl and can be transferred from fowl to human," said Lily Sulistyowati, the health ministry's spokeswoman.
The lack of mutation means the virus remains hard for humans to catch. Worldwide, the virus has infected 368 people in 14 countries since 2003, killing 234 of them, or 64 percent.
But it has killed millions of poultry. Since late 2003, when the virus resurfaced in Asia and has since spread to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, hundreds of millions of birds have died from the disease or have been culled to try to stop it spreading.
Indonesia sent H5N1 bird flu virus samples in February to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after a nearly 6-month hiatus when it won assurance that it would have access to affordable vaccines.
Jakarta said it sent 12 samples, although the CDC said it received 15 samples from 2 positive H5N1 cases from the country. Indonesia is the nation worst hit by the disease, which has infected 129 of its people so far, killing 105 of them.
Indonesia drew international concern when it defied protocol and refused to share its virus samples last year, saying it wanted guarantees from richer nations and drug makers that poor countries would get access to affordable vaccines derived from their samples.
Talks hosted by the WHO last year in Geneva failed to reach an agreement on a new virus-sharing system, and the impasse only seemed to ease when it handed over the samples last month.
The WHO says it has begun to disclose how and where samples it receives are used in response to poor countries' demands for more transparency.
(Reporting by Mita Valina Liem; Writing by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by David Fogarty)

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSJAK15052820080305?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

 

[gsgs]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

it is still H5N1

but

any intrasubtypic reassortments such as in Jan.2007 ?
Are there markers from the reassortant virus, did it spread ?

does the separation into a human and an-avian clade in Indonesia continue
or do we get increased mixes ?

(when) will we see the sequences ?

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

It also begs the question as to why the fatality rate is so high in Indonesia.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

Tamiflu works poorly for the Indo-strain, I read.

 

[HenryN]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

Tamiflu works poorly for the Indo-strain, I read.

Roche data said the opposite> Tamiflu works but in Indonesia its use is delayed. The Indo strain with resistance to Tamiflu was in poultry.

 

[Commonground]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

It also begs the question as to why the fatality rate is so high in Indonesia.

I believe it is one or both things:

1) Private Hospitals were not given Tamiflu, and medical staff in those private hospitals were not trained to identify or treat patients with H5N1; and/or

2) Patients that are showing up, are beyond the 48 hours from their first symptoms, to get the Tamiflu. The more time that goes by, the less chance they have of recovery.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

OK, I found a link to the paper which I had in mind:

http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/13/9/1354.htm
Abstract
We tested the neuraminidase drug sensitivity of clade 1 and clade 2 influenza A (H5N1). All viruses demonstrated similar sensitivity to zanamivir, but compared with the 2004 clade 1 viruses, the Cambodian 2005 viruses were 6-fold less sensitive and the Indonesian clade 2 viruses were up to 30-fold less sensitive to oseltamivir.

 

[Commonground]

Re: Indonesia Sends Bird Flu Samples to WHO

[2 articles]

Indonesia regains its national sanity, shares bird flu samples again
Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 02:15PM
http://www.scottmcpherson.net/journ...-flu-sample.html?lastPage=true#comment1346122
Excerpt:

Seriously, what is clearly going on is this: Indonesia has lost the handle completely on containment of H5N1. As we all know, the disease is endemic in poultry, wild birds, pigs, cats, dogs, and possibly even certain villagers. They also know -- or suspect -- their deal with Baxter is insufficient to protect the entire country from the disease. So they have successfully negotiated a settlement with the WHO, and I am betting a good deal of that settlement was financially brokered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is entirely speculative on my part, but it took someone with access to incredibly deep pockets to financially back that agreement, and the only entity that I am aware of with that kind of financial clout is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign comes a close second, but they are too busy trying to fend off the "other Bill," as the prospective First Philanderer tries to buy Democrat delegate support even as Obama wins them. It's the American Way!

But I gleefully digress. Indonesia is throwing in the towel, and I strongly suspect they know something we don't. Their people must have performed their own calculus and determined that H5N1 is beyond their capabilities, maybe even Baxter's, to solve. So they have turned back to the WHO and the UN for help.

03/05/08 19:08
Bill Gates expected to visit Indonesia in May

Jakarta, March 5 (ANTARA) - Communications and Informatics Minister Muhammad Nuh said William H Gates or Bill Gates, boss of computer giant Microsoft, is expected to attend a Government Leaders Forum here on May 8-9, 2008.

"Bill Gates is expected to attend the Asia Government Leaders Forum in Jakarta," the minister told newsmen at his office here on Wednesday.

He said Bill Gates had on November 14, 2007 replied to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono`s letter inviting him to come to Indonesia.

"We are preparing matters in which Indonesia can cooperate with Microsoft," the minister added.

Microsoft Indonesia Director Tony Chen earlier said that his office would soon confirm the visit of Bill Gates to Indonesia to attend the forum.

"We will announce it in the near future," Tony Chen told the press after the launching of Microsoft`s news products, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, last month.

He said confirmation of Gates` visit would be made pending fixed dates of Indonesia hosting the Government Leaders Forum, an annual meeting of Asia Pacific leaders to discuss information technology and its application in various fields for the welfare of people.

The host country of the forum was to be decided this month. Five countries were tipped to host the event, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea.

Tony was optimistic about Indonesia`s chances to host the even due to the fact that the Indonesian government had policies supporting development of information technology. (*)

http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/3/5/bill-gates-expected-to-visit-indonesia-in-may/