Indonesia halts U.S. naval lab's activities

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has halted the activities of a U.S. naval medical lab in Jakarta following a dispute over the terms of a contract, the health minister said on Thursday.

The U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2 has been key to efforts to track bird flu in Indonesia, the country with the most human deaths from the H5N1 virus.

But a memorandum of understanding allowing the lab to operate in Jakarta expired two years ago and was not renewed as a dispute arose over Indonesia's sharing of samples of H5N1 with the rest of the world.

"They are not allowed to do any activities anymore," Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari told Reuters by phone. "The term is suspension, but there are no activities at all now."

Earlier in April, she said the lab was not very beneficial to Indonesia because it refused to share all its findings with the host country.

Retno Marsudi, Indonesian directorate general for America and Europe relations, said the contract with Washington to operate the lab had not been terminated.

A U.S. embassy spokesman in Jakarta declined to comment.

Indonesia ordered hospitals and labs in the country to stop supplying bird flu samples to the American lab early this year and now only reports bird flu cases in humans to public every six months, a move some scientists say could lead to delays in containing outbreaks of the disease.

Jakarta has also refused to share bird flu samples, saying it wants guarantees from richer nations and drugmakers that poor countries would get access to affordable vaccines developed from their samples.

International health experts say it is vital to have access to samples of the constantly mutating H5N1 virus, which they fear could change into a form easily transmissible among humans and sweep the world in months, killing millions of people.

Indonesia has suffered 112 casualties from the virus.