Indonesia does not want money for its bird flu virus samples — it wants governments and pharmaceutical companies to come up with a mechanism that will ensure future pandemic vaccines are accessible to developing nations.
That could include creating a multilateral trust that would enable price tiering or bulk purchasing of lifesaving vaccines, an adviser to Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Wednesday.
Widjaja Lukito was responding to comments made by US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who accused Indonesia of withholding virus samples from the WHO since early last year because it wanted royalties or other monetary benefits.
“This is not a line we want to cross,” Leavitt said at the end of a quick stopover in Indonesia last week. “Because it means the next unique virus we come across, wherever it is, we’ll end up with people who say there is a price to pay for the virus.”
He repeated the allegation on his blog, saying Supari’s bottom line was “share samples, get paid.”
Indonesia — seen as a potential hotspot for a pandemic because of its high density of chickens and humans — denied that was the case.
Lukito said he thought there may have been poor communication on both sides.
“There are many types of benefit programs that can be discussed,” said Lukito, noting that the US and Indonesia agreed during Leavitt’s visit to set up an expert panel on the issue. “One could be a kind of revolving fund developed by pharmaceutical companies.”
Another, he said, could be to create a multilateral trust — funded by contributions from governments, influenza vaccine manufacturers and individuals — to make sure vaccines could be produced and distributed in a fair and equitable manner.
Suggestions at a WHO meeting in Geneva late last year included tiered pricing of vaccines, bulk purchasing and other procurement mechanisms that take into consideration how much governments could afford, Lukito said.
Indonesia has been hardest hit by bird flu since it began plaguing Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, with its 107 human deaths accounting for nearly half the 240 recorded fatalities worldwide. The virus remains hard for people to catch, but scientists worry it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.
Under the existing virus-sharing system, poor countries are obliged to send samples to WHO, which then makes them available to a handful of pharmaceutical companies to use in vaccine production.
Wealthy nations have stockpiled bird flu vaccines, while Indonesia and other developing countries have limited supplies.
Many international health experts say Supari had a point when she bucked WHO’s decades-old virus sharing system. But by withholding bird flu samples, health experts say, she is impeding the global body’s ability to monitor whether the virus is morphing into a more dangerous form.
Leavitt wrote in his blog on April 15 that his patience was wearing thin.
Supari was trying to put a price tag on virus samples, he said.
“We cannot be party to an arrangement that will undo 60 years of one of the world’s great public health successes,” he said.
“Linking sample-sharing to payment in any form will immediately begin to erode our ability to make vaccines at all, because once the practice of free and open sharing of viruses stops, the slope is slippery, and there will be no end to the demands,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS