Indonesia had stopped sending samples to WHO since December 2006 because it wanted guarantees that vaccines developed from the virus will be made affordable to poor and developing countries.
Indonesia's Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, said that the samples from recent bird flu patients were just for risk assessment. "If they want to develop them into a seed virus they must notify us. If they make them into a vaccine our rights over (the vaccine) will be recognized."
The samples came from two patients whose infection was verified by the WHO. The first patient was a 27-year-old woman who died on Feb. 5 and a 15-year-old girl who was infected with H5N1 after her mother died of the disease. Both lived in Jakarta suburb.
According to WHO, Indonesia is the most affected country from the fatal H5N1 virus, having a record of 105 deaths from bird flu or nearly half of the global tally.
