US official to meet Yudhoyono on birdflu
Updated
![More than 100 people have died in Indonesia from birdflu since the virus. [AFP]](http://www.abc.net.au/ra/img/news/base/INDON_BIRDFLU_AFP_190506.jpg?<BR> "More than 100 people have died in Indonesia from birdflu since the virus. [AFP]")
More than 100 people have died in Indonesia from birdflu since the virus. [AFP]
The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is meeting a top US health official in Jakarta to discuss the birdflu crisis.
The US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt is in Indonesia on a one-day visit.
"He will meet the president this afternoon to discuss cooperation in health, with the bird flu issue high on the agenda," said Indonesian presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal.
Since the virus emerged in Asia in 2003, it has caused 107 deaths in Indonesia, 13 of them this year.
There are concerns among flu experts that the lethal H5N1 strain of the birdflu virus could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, raising the possibility of a pandemic.
In February, after nearly six months' hiatus, Jakarta sent birdflu virus samples to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a laboratory working with the World Health Organisation, after winning an assurance that it would get access to affordable vaccines.
However, the Indonesian government says it will supply the samples on a limited case-by-case basis until the WHO completes a new mechanism governing virus sharing.
Indonesia attracted international criticism last year when it stopped sharing the samples, saying it wanted guarantees from wealthy states and drug companies that poorer nations would be given access to affordable vaccines derived from their samples.
