# 1959
Health minister Siti Fadillah Supari, whose country has been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in bird flu aid, not to mention millions more worth of relief for their 2005 Tsunami, continues to withhold H5N1 virus samples from the rest of the world.
She is demanding an `equal access' to any bird flu vaccine. Exactly what she means by `equal access' has never, to my knowledge, been spelled out.
Meanwhile, the virus continues to spread and mutate in Indonesia, and the world effectively has a blind spot in what is perhaps the biggest avian flu hot spot on the globe.
May 7, 2008
Indonesia sees cultural divide on bird flu sharing
JAKARTA - INDONESIA is trying to defend the interests of poorer nations by refusing to share bird flu samples with the West and is locked in a cultural misunderstanding over the issue, Jakarta's health minister Siti Fadillah Supari said.
Ms Supari also said on Wednesday in an interview that a US naval medical lab based in Indonesia for research into tropical diseases was barely benefiting its host country and was not being transparent in its operations.
'Poor countries sent the virus to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on behalf of humanity. But it was commercialised by the WHO,' Ms Supari said in her office in central Jakarta.
Officials in Indonesia, the country with the highest number of human bird flu victims, have said they want to ensure equal access to any vaccines that are made against bird flu.
But US Health Secretary Michael Leavitt said last month after visiting Jakarta that Indonesia also wanted payments.
Ms Supari likened Indonesia's gripe over virus sharing to someone giving a ripe banana to someone so it could be fried to raise its value and then not giving any benefit to the person providing the banana.
'Well that's our culture, but Western culture cannot understand. Western people are used to buying the thing and after that don't feel any attachment,' said Ms Supari, who is known for being outspoken on the bird flu issue.
She said that virus samples were not being sent to the WHO until a new fairer global mechanism for sharing was in place, that ensured that samples sent from countries benefited them.
