Global Health and Foreign Policy Blog

The world’s ability to prevent a devastating pandemic of influenza depends in large part on the willingness and ability of countries to share information, including virus samples, openly and quickly. A delay in detecting and reacting to an outbreak of human-to-human transmission caused by self-interested hoarding of samples or information could lead to thousands, if not millions, of otherwise avoidable deaths. That is why the pressure is on for the World Health Organization (WHO) to help countries iron out a possible impasse on bird flu sample sharing.

The tension originally arose from a group of countries, led by Indonesia, claiming intellectual property rights over flu virus samples originating inside their borders. For the last half-century, countries had freely shared influenza samples with the WHO, which then worked with various laboratories (including the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Britain’s Health Protection Agency) to isolate and study them. In some cases, the virus samples were used to generate “seed strains”, which would then be handed over to pharmaceutical companies so they could manufacture and sell influenza vaccines back to countries. Indonesia, which has recorded the highest death toll due H5N1 (avian) influenza, stopped sharing samples earlier this year saying that it required assurances that it would have access to any products developed using its samples. Other countries quickly joined the call for access to life-saving interventions generated using samples coming from their territory.

In response to the growing stalemate, the WHO convened a special working group meeting of 24 countries on July 31, 2007, whose goal is to generate recommendations flu virus sample sharing. While the task at hand is limited to flu samples, the repercussions of any guidelines could include other infectious diseases of international concern. Governments, pharmaceutical companies, intellectual property rights supporters, and public health representatives all have large, and somewhat opposing, stakes in the outcome of these discussions.

The developing nations’ concerns are legitimate. It would not be hard to imagine, especially in the face of an actual pandemic, that vaccines generated from Indonesian virus samples might be hoarded by rich countries where the manufacturing capabilities lie, or perhaps priced too high for poor countries to purchase enough to adequately protect their populations. On the other hand, any restrictions on virus sharing could hinder tracking the virus and developing necessary vaccines. If countries are allowed to share only on a limited basis, gaps in knowledge will result and the march of scientific progress will be slowed.

The WHO can be commended for taking rapid action on this complicated issue. The solution should fall heavily on the side of maintaining a robust scientific exchange on disease, because the cost (in lives and dollars) of a slow pandemic response far outweighs the potential loss of economic returns on a product. It will take skillful diplomacy to make sure that all stakeholders are working together to face the world’s biggest disease threat.