Why is Indonesia withholding samples that could track the viruss evolution and help produce a vaccine?
Indonesia is open to international collaboration but this must be fair, transparent and equitable. The WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance Network system is obviously unfair and opaque. Samples shared become the property of the WHO collaborating centres in rich countries, where they are used to generate research papers, patents and to commercialize vaccines. But the developing countries that supply the samples do not share in these benefits. In the event of a pandemic, we also risk having no access to vaccines, or having to buy them at prices we cannot afford, despite the fact that the vaccines were developed using our samples. The above mechanisms can lead to a vicious cycle, in which poor countries become poorer because they have diseases, and industrialized countries become richer at the expense of poor countries. As a consequence, there will be some people who will create diseases and take advantage of the situation. This is a form of neo-colonialism and neo-capitalism. What would
