Baxter: No avian flu trials announced for Indonesia

Drug manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp. said Wednesday it has not announced plans for clinical tests of a bird flu vaccine in Indonesia, contradicting the country's top health official.

Health minister Siti Fadilah Supari told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Indonesia will stockpile millions of doses of the vaccine. She said Baxter's "clinical trial involving hundreds of participants will start in July" and should be concluded by October.

Hours later, Baxter spokesman Chris Bona said the Deerfield, Ill.-based company has a "memorandum of understanding" with the Indonesian government to continue discussions about a possible avian flu outbreak, but has not made a supply agreement.

"We haven't announced the start of clinical trials in Asia," he said. The company has previously announced clinical trials of the vaccination in Europe.

Bird flu has killed at least 186 people since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003, two out of five of them Indonesians, according to the World Health Organization. Human infection remains relatively sparse, but experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic that could kill millions worldwide.

Baxter is able to produce 2 million doses of the vaccine per week, Bona said.