URGENT DEMARCHE FOR WHO SINGAPORE MEETING ON SHARING

UNCLAS HANOI 001333 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR EAP/MLS, EAP/EP, G/AIAG STATE PASS TO HHS/OGHA (STIEGER/VALDEZ/BELL/HICKEY) CDC FOR OGHA (BLOUT/MCCALL) AND DIV-FLU (COX/MOHEN) HHS PASS TO FIC/NIH (GLASS) BANGKOK FOR CDC (MALISON) BEIJING FOR HHS HEALTH ATTACHE (ROSS) PHNOM PENH FOR CDC INFLUENZA COORDINATOR (BRADY) VIENTIANE FOR CDC INFLUENZA COORDINATOR (CORWIN) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: TBIO KFLU AORC PNIR PREL OTRA WHO VM SUBJECT: URGENT DEMARCHE FOR WHO SINGAPORE MEETING ON SHARING INFLUENZA VIRUS SAMPLES AND VACCINE ACCESS REF: (A) SECSTATE 103509, (B) HANOI 890 ¶1. (U) On July 27 ESTHOff and CDC Avian Influenza Advisor conveyed the points in ref A and delivered the non-paper entitled "Goals for Meeting of WHO Interdisciplinary Working Group" to the Ministry of Health's International Cooperation Department General Director Dr. Tran Trong Hai. Post also faxed a copy of the non-paper to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ¶2. (SBU) After delivering our points, Dr. Hai responded that the Government of Vietnam (GVN) is quite familiar with this issue and Government of Indonesia's declaration. He stated that the GVN has two principles: 1) the GVN strongly supports sharing of virus samples for the benefit of the global community; however, 2) the GVN also agrees to some of the principles that contributing countries may unfairly benefit from the revenue that pharmaceutical companies receive from commercialized drugs and vaccines produced from these virus strains. He added that Vietnam was the first country to provide avian influenza strains to the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network and that the GVN seeks to openly share such strains in the future. Dr. Hai expressed a frustration that oftentimes little information is shared after the strains are submitted to the WHO system and that more technology transfer for vaccine development could be provided to developing countries. Dr. Hai concluded by stating that he would share the document with the Minister of Health. ¶3. (U) During the follow-up discussion, the CDC Avian Influenza Advisor noted that Vietnam does indeed benefit from this information, citing an example of how the GVN's Nha Trang Vaccine and Bioproduct Institute is currently producing a human AI vaccine using a WHO-supplied seed strain that comes from ONE of the original Vietnam-sourced strains. In another example, CDC/Atlanta recently responded to GVN by immediately confirming that H5N1 viruses from May 2007 Vietnam human cases belonged to genomic clade 2.3, a finding of scientific and public HEALTH importance to Vietnam. ¶4. (SBU) COMMENT: Dr. Hai's comments, which indicate that the GVN is sensitive to issues raised by Indonesia, should not generate immediate concerns about GVN's compliance with its agreements on sample sharing. The GVN has been among the most straightforward and cooperative international players in this regard. We do not think the GVN believes that countries contributing samples of virus are entitled to more than analysis, technical assistance and recommendations; and the GVN has not alluded to compensation related to sample sharing (ref B). END COMMENT. ¶5. (U) Dr. Nguyen Tran Hien, Director of National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE),will be the senior GVN representative to the WHO IWG meeting in Singapore on July 31. MARINE