Indonesia hopes agreement on bird flu virus specimen to be settled
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-05 10:00:08   Print

    JAKARTA, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia hopes negotiations on the material transfer agreement for bird flu virus specimen could be finished in the inter-governmental meeting of WHO members in November, health minister Siti Fadillah Supari said.

    Indonesia hopes the agreement could be made simple but able to accommodate the interests of the developing countries, Antara news agency on Friday quoted the minister as saying.

    "We wish our property right to the virus would receive recognition and we had access to information on where the virus had been taken to and how it had been handled," she said here on Thursday.

    She said the agreement must also cover deals on benefit sharing both financially or otherwise that come from the result of researches on specimen sent by affected countries.

    Talks on mechanism of avian flu virus sharing was started early in 2007 after the Indonesian government protested the unfair mechanism of virus sharing and exchange of the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN).

    Since then several rounds of meeting had been held by members of the World Health Organization affected by the H5N1 virus aimed at formulating the framework of a fair, transparent and equal virus sharing mechanism.

    Indonesia is the bird flu hardest hit country with more than 100 people killed by the H5N1 virus. ¡¡

Editor: An
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