The United States has made a global agreement with the World Health Organization and vaccine makers to share virus samples in exchange for vaccines produced for them. The vaccines would be sold at a reduced price or donated to countries that can’t afford them. According to Reuters, the negotiations for the deal began four years ago after the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus emerged in southeast Asia.
“A year later, Indonesia stopped sharing flu virus samples with the WHO’s network, demanding its share of vaccines,” Reuters said. The deal allows drug companies to decide between donating “significant amounts of vaccines or antivirals” or transferring “technology for manufacturing pandemic vaccines,” Reuters quoted an anonymous diplomatic source as saying.
While Reuters listed GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis as major flu vaccine makers, it apparently forgot that Baxter Healthcare of Deerfield, Illinois was the flu vaccine maker that instigated Indonesia to stop sharing its sample viruses in the first place. As reported by The New York Times and other media in February 2007, Indonesia stopped sending flu virus samples to the WHO and other countries after it signed a contract to sell them to Baxter. Two months later, Bloomberg reported that Indonesia was trying to negotiate the same deal with GSK and Novartis. And in November 2007, Reuters reported that Indonesia said it would not share any more viruses until there was a “guarantee” from richer nations and drug companies that poor countries would get affordable vaccines.