# 529
Depending on when you check the headlines either 1) Indonesia and the WHO have reached an agreement on releasing H5N1 sequences or 2) They remain at an impasse.
Luckily, we have Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press to sort this out for us, at least as well as it can be at this time.
Confusion reigns over whether Indonesia will share bird flu viruses
HELEN BRANSWELL
(CP) - Confusion reigned Thursday over whether Indonesia will soon resume sharing H5N1 avian flu viruses with the rest of the world through the World Health Organization - something it hasn't done since the beginning of the year.
The country has been withholding viral samples in a bid to extract guarantees that it will be given affordable access to H5N1 vaccines. While the WHO hopes to help Indonesia achieve its goal of affordable H5N1 vaccine, the agency is not in a position to guarantee that the country will be able to buy pandemic vaccine, at low cost or any cost.
Thursday's confusion stemmed from an announcement from Indonesia's health minister, Dr. Siti Fadillah Supari, who said the country would resume sharing viruses shortly.
Supari said she had received verbal assurances from WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan that the viruses would be used only to study the evolution of H5N1 and not for production of vaccine. Once those assurances have been put in writing, she said, Indonesia will again ship H5N1 viruses with international laboratories.
A spokesperson for the agency, Dick Thompson, told the Associated Press that Supari's suggestion she'd been given a guarantee that the viruses would not be shared for vaccine development was incorrect. Thompson later said that a letter to Indonesia from the WHO was still being drafted and he had been wrong to imply anything about its contents.
The WHO's influenza czar, Dr. David Heymann, refused to disclose what Chan had told Supari.
"The communications between WHO and ministers are confidential. We can't give any information out about them," Heymann said from Geneva.
It seems unlikely, however, that the international health body could agree to permanently place a limit on how viruses from Indonesia could be used. Doing so would violate a resolution approved by the agency's executive board in January.
The remainder of the article, as always when scribed by Ms. Branswell, is well worth reading.
