December 1, 2005

 

Netherlands to help Indonesia improve H5N1 vaccine

 

 

The Dutch government will help spearhead a bird flu research programme in Indonesia to help the Southeast Asian nation improve the quality of its H5N1 vaccines for poultry, an official at the agriculture ministry said.

 

"The Dutch government will provide expertise to help us improve local poultry vaccine production," Syamsul Bahri, director of animal health at the Ministry of Agriculture, told reporters Wednesday.

 

Bahri said the Dutch government will help conduct research into the effectiveness of Indonesia's current vaccine formulas.

 

Field work will commence in Sukabumi regency, West Java, in January 2006, Bahri said.

 

The entire research program is expected to last six months.

 

Last month, the Ministry of Agriculture said it will evaluate bird flu vaccines produced by local firms amid suspicion the formulas do not meet standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE.

 

The ministry said evidence indicates some H5N1 vaccines contain active strains of the virus, which would infect the birds rather than inoculate them against contagion.

 

EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said earlier this month that Indonesia's mass vaccination program to prevent the spread of H5N1 bird flu in poultry is unsustainable and should be abandoned.

 

Kyprianou suggested that Indonesia lacks the capacity to conduct an effective, international-standard mass poultry vaccination programme.

 

It is still unclear if vaccination protects just treated birds or has wider benefits such as lessening the infectiousness of poultry with bird flu.

 

But the allegations over ineffective vaccines produced by local firms have raised international concern about the bird flu outbreak in Indonesia, which has killed 7 people out of 12 confirmed cases since July.

 

International health officials warned that Indonesia may rival Cambodia and Vietnam as a weak link in global efforts to prevent the emergence of an easily transmissible human strain of the H5N1 virus which could spawn a deadly pandemic.