Indonesia announced three more human deaths from bird flu yesterday, a day after it agreed to resume sending virus samples to international researchers on condition they wouldn't be made freely available to commercial vaccine makers.
Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by the H5N1 bird flu virus, had stopped sharing samples with the World Health Organization (WHO) because it feared its strain would be used to develop vaccines unaffordable for poor nations in the event of a pandemic.
"Now we have the right to directly face the companies to negotiate to get what we want," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said, adding Indonesia would resume sending viruses immediately. "We trust WHO will not violate our trust, because this is related to the WHO's credibility."
The WHO and other experts say sharing samples is vital to finding ways to fight the virus, while Indonesia and some other developing countries like Thailand want to make sure they have access to human vaccines at reasonable prices.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said yesterday the world should work to create a level playing field to combat bird flu and other health threats.
"I would like to stress that winning the global health battle depends on empowering all countries to equitably develop their own preparedness and protection capacity for all infectious and life-threatening diseases," he told representatives of nearly 30 countries meeting in Jakarta to discuss the bird flu problem.
The virus is endemic among fowl in many parts of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. Human cases generally involve contact with infected birds.
A health ministry official said yesterday second tests had confirmed a teenager, a 22-year-old woman and a 39-year-old man had died from bird flu in Indonesia.
The 39-year-old man among the three was from East Java and "was a bird lover ... on March 11 his and neighbors' chickens died suddenly. The tests showed that they were infected by avian flu," Muhammad Nadirin at the health ministry's bird flu center said by telephone.
Bird flu has swept through poultry across Asia to Africa and Europe. Experts say it could mutate into a form easily passing from one person to another, possibly killing millions in months.
Indonesia has had difficulty controlling the disease because millions of Indonesians keep small numbers of chickens for food and to supplement incomes.
Its agreement on Tuesday to resume sending virus samples to the WHO ended a standoff that began in December.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS