RI'S PROPOSAL ON BIRD-FLU FIGHTING MECHANISM APPROVED BY WORLD HEALTH ASSEMBLY

Jakarta - WHO member countries attending an on-going World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland, have unanimously approved an Indonesian draft resolution calling for the creation of a mechanism for the distribution and sharing of bird flu samples.

"Almost 100 percent of our proposal has been accepted unanimously," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said when reached by phone from Jakarta on Wednesday (23/05).

She said the proposal which referred to the Jakarta Declaration would later be submitted to and improved at a WHO Executive Board meeting on May 23 and be part of a binding WHA resolution. "Automatically, it will be part of an international health regulation binding all WHO member counties," she said. Fadilah has been in Geneva since May 16 to attend the World Health Assembly which is being attended by delegations from WHO's member countries.

Under the mechanism proposed by Indonesia, all poor and developing nations hit by bird flu would have equal access to vaccines to prevent and medicines to treat Avian Influenza caused by the H5N1 virus, the Minister said.

She had previously said Indonesia's draft resolution was presented to realize the establishment of a more equitable mechanism for the exchange of new biological specimens as existing WHO rules on distribution and sharing of viruses, which had been in force for the past 50 years, disadvantaged poor and developing nations.

The Minister said since the first bird flu outbreak in Indonesia in July 2005, the government had been voluntarily sending virus specimens to the WHO's laboratory in Hong Kong for further study. However, WHO apparently was not consistent in exchanging the virus as stipulated in the regulation.

The virus, its genetic sequence and part of the sequence from Indonesia and other countries hit by the deadly virus were used by third parties in the form of presentations, publications, commercialization and patent procedures without the knowledge of the countries of the virus' origin.

As a result, she said, bird-flu-hit nations did not only bear loss of lives by the disease, but also met with difficulties in getting access to vaccines and medicine to fight the disease.

Indonesia's draft resolution, among other things, called for the establishment of a new mechanism to enable developing nations to have access to data, research on bird flu and the capability to produce vaccines and medicines.

Every country sharing the information, data and specimens would also get benefits from samples and support for developing and producing vaccines and medicines at the local level (Antara,24/05/07).

---