# 2326
After months of threats, it appears that Indonesian officials have made good on their promise to shut down the US NAMRU-2 (Naval Medical Research Unit) lab in Jakarta.
NAMRU-2, the Naval Medical Research Unit (#2), was established in 1944, and over the past 64 years has been stationed at various locations in the Pacific Theatre.
NAMRU-3 is located in Cairo, Egypt.
Over the past 6 decades NAMRU-2 has been headquartered in places such as Guam, Taiwan, Manila, and most recently Indonesia, and it has been credited with major breakthroughs in research, particularly on tropical diseases.
Over the past few years, bird flu has been a major focus of their work, although it isn't clear how much access they've had over the past two years. Relations with the Indonesian government have been tenuous at best.
NAMRU-2's relationship with Indonesia has been further strained by the recent publication of Health Minister Supari's book charging the United States with trying to profit from the spread of bird flu.
Over the summer there were wild, often outlandish charges lodged against the NAMRU personnel, and calls for investigations by Indonesian politicians.
A few of my previous blogs on this are here, here, here, and here.
While not completely unexpected, this is very disappointing.
The closing of NAMRU in Indonesia is another serious setback in our ability to track the bird flu virus in the the hottest of the hotzone countries.
This report from Reuters.
Thursday September 25, 2008
Indonesia halts U.S. naval lab's activities
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has halted the activities of a U.S. naval medical lab in Jakarta following a dispute over the terms of a contract, the health minister said on Thursday.
The U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2 has been key to efforts to track bird flu in Indonesia, the country with the most human deaths from the H5N1 virus.
But a memorandum of understanding allowing the lab to operate in Jakarta expired two years ago and was not renewed as a dispute arose over Indonesia's sharing of samples of H5N1 with the rest of the world.
"They are not allowed to do any activities anymore," Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari told Reuters by phone. "The term is suspension, but there are no activities at all now."
Earlier in April, she said the lab was not very beneficial to Indonesia because it refused to share all its findings with the host country.
