Alarm as Indonesia thumbs nose at West over bird flu

Indonesia stopped sharing the samples with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December 2006 on fears pharmaceutical companies would use them to make vaccines that are too expensive for poor countries.

The initial move by Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari earned international plaudits for taking on an unfair global system, but with WHO negotiations at an impasse, Supari's increasing belligerence is raising alarm.

The minister has broadened her critique of an "unfair, neocolonialist" global health system, raising the possibility earlier this year the United States was using the virus to develop biological weapons in her book "It's Time for the World to Change: Divine Hands Behind Avian Influenza."

Supari told a rapturous crowd at a book discussion last week that rich nations were creating "new viruses" and sending them to developing nations in order create markets for drug companies to sell vaccines.

"Indonesia sends a virus to the WHO but it suddenly it ends up with the US government. Then the US government turns the virus into dollars and we don't know what kind of research," Supari said.

"Then the virus is turned into vaccines (that are sent to) Indonesia and Indonesia has to buy them and if they don't buy them, it turns and turns again, and in the end developed countries make new viruses which are then sent to developing countries," she said.

"The conspiracy between superpower nations and global organisations isn't a theory, isn't rhetoric, but it's something I've experienced myself."

Bird flu scientists abroad and in Indonesia have raised concerns that while Supari seeks to reshape the global order, time is being wasted in understanding a virus that could potentially kill millions if it mutates into a form transmissible between humans.

Indonesia announced in August that 112 people have died from the virus, out of more than 240 worldwide since late 2003. Only a handful of samples and genetic sequences have been shared with the WHO and researchers.

The health ministry also earlier this year stopped publicly announcing bird flu deaths, only releasing information information weeks or months after victims have died.

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