Editorial: Devising a more equitable system

Following the recent meeting in Jakarta to resolve the impasse, Indonesia has agreed to resume sharing its bird flu virus samples with the World Health Organisation.  In January this year, it had stopped sharing its H5N1 samples with the world body. The latest decision is on Indonesia’s terms — the samples will be used by the WHO solely for research and not shared with the pharmaceutical industry.  Indonesia’s consent will be necessary before developing a vaccine using its virus.  Access to virus from all countries affected by bird flu and particularly from southeast Asia, the hotbed for H5N1 outbreaks and where most human deaths have occurred, is important for tracking the continually evolving virus and developing vaccines before it mutates to a strain that can easily spread among humans.  With Indonesia reporting the largest number of human deaths from bird flu, including deaths from human-to-human transmission, there is an overwhelming compulsion to study those samples.  While the ire of the scientific community over Indonesia’s earlier stand not to share samples is justified, Indonesia has a point as well.  In the process it has brought into focus the inequity involved in such a sharing mechanism that every developing country is likely to face when a pandemic strikes.

The samples shared with the WHO have been accessible to the scientific community as well as the drug industry.  In all likelihood, pharmaceutical companies in the developed countries may succeed in producing an efficacious vaccine. And a natural outcome will be the stockpiling of vaccines by the country producing them when a pandemic strikes. The southeast Asian countries that had supplied the strains from which the vaccine may be developed will themselves have no right of access to it. It will be unfortunate if the WHO which urges countries to share samples with it denies a sharing country, particularly a developing one, the benefits of the research  based on the material they provided. Expressing its gratitude to Indonesia “for focussing attention on this inequity” alone will be insufficient.  The current arrangement, which Indonesia has challenged, has brought to the fore the compulsion of the developing countries to safeguard their interests in what may be called genetic property rights much like the intellectual property rights that the developed countries have long established.  With no expertise to develop and manufacture the vaccines, many developing countries will still have to look west for their requirements.  It is time the international community devised a system in which countries that aid research and the development of new drugs or vaccines by providing initial information and material are not denied the fruits of the research.