Indonesia announced three more human deaths from bird flu yesterday, a day after it agreed to resume sending virus samples to international researchers on condition they wouldn't be made freely available to commercial vaccine makers.
Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus, had stopped sharing samples with the World Health Organization (WHO) because it feared its strain would be used to develop vaccines unaffordable for poor nations in the event of a pandemic.
"Now we have the right to directly face the companies to negotiate to get what we want," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said, adding Indonesia would resume sending viruses immediately. "We trust WHO will not violate our trust, because this is related to the WHO's credibility."
The WHO and other experts say sharing samples is vital to finding ways to fight the virus, while Indonesia and some other developing countries like Thailand want to make sure they have access to human vaccines at reasonable prices.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said yesterday the world should work to create a level playing field to combat bird flu and other health threats.
"I would like to stress that winning the global health battle depends on empowering all countries to equitably develop their own preparedness and protection capacity for all infectious and life-threatening diseases," he told representatives of nearly 30 countries meeting in Jakarta to discuss the bird flu problem.
The virus is endemic among fowl in many parts of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. Human cases generally involve contact with infected birds.
A health ministry official said yesterday second tests had confirmed a teenager, a 22-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man had died from bird flu in Indonesia.
The 39-year-old man among the three was from East Java and "was a bird lover ... on March 11 his and neighbors' chickens died suddenly. The tests showed that they were infected by avian flu," Muhammad Nadirin at the health ministry's bird flu center said by telephone.
Bird flu has swept through poultry across Asia to Africa and Europe. Experts say it could mutate into a form easily passing from one person to another, possibly killing millions in months.
Indonesia has had difficulty controlling the disease because millions of Indonesians keep small numbers of chickens for food and to supplement incomes.
Its agreement on Tuesday to resume sending virus samples to the WHO ended a standoff that began in December.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS