Indonesia will not share samples taken from the bird flu virus circulating in the country with foreign laboratories to protect its intellectual property rights ahead of a vaccine deal with an international pharmaceutical company, the health minister said Tuesday.
Indonesia is the worst hit country by the H5N1 virus. Last week, it announced plans to mass produce a vaccine that may protect people against a yet-to-emerge pandemic strain of bird flu. Several other countries are doing the same.
"I am fighting for Indonesia to hold full intellectual property rights (over the virus strain) because we have the strongest strain in the world," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said. "We cannot share (the virus) with other countries for now. We are cooperating with a vaccine producer"
Not allowing foreign researchers access to the strain could hamper international research into bird flu. The World Health Organization in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment.
Supari declined to name the foreign company pharmaceutical company Indonesia was planning to cooperate with in producing the vaccine, saying it would be announced in the coming days.
If a pandemic bird flu strain emerges, experts say it could take six months before vaccines such as the one Indonesia is developing could be adjusted to provide full protection.
Earlier, the health ministry said two more Indonesians _ a 15-year-old girl and a 35-year-old man from different parts of Java island _ had been sickened with the bird flu virus, bringing the country's confirmed number of human cases to 83.
Bird flu has killed or prompted the culling of millions of birds worldwide since late 2003, when it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks. It has killed at least 164 people worldwide, but remains difficult for humans to catch.
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