Jakarta, Indonesia ? Children rarely die from measles or other preventable diseases in the West, but in the developing world lifesaving drugs and vaccines are still out of reach for many. Will access to bird flu vaccines be any different?

That’s the question Indonesia is asking by refusing to share its H5N1 bird flu virus samples with the World Health Organization until it gets a guarantee that it can obtain vaccines if a flu pandemic emerges.

An unidentified vendor offers a chick for sale Sunday in Hamad Town, Bahrain. Chicks are still selling, but many Bahrainis are worrying more about bird flu making its way to the Gulf island nation after a contaminated poultry farm was culled and sterilized across the causeway in eastern Saudi Arabia. Last week, authorities announced a special isolation ward is ready at the country's main hospital to receive any bird flu cases.

Indonesia – the nation hardest hit by bird flu, with 66 human deaths – has dug in its heels, refusing to bow to international pressure from scientists desperate to check whether the virus is mutating into a more dangerous form.

“This is the inevitable consequence of trying to privatize knowledge, and of a poor country saying the system is unfair,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economics laureate who has written about patents and globalization. “There are so few examples where a poor country has some bargaining chips on its side, and that’s what makes this case so interesting.”

Indonesia is not opposed to monitoring in general, but Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has stressed that she is against giving vaccine makers free access to the country’s viruses under WHO’s 50-year-old system of virus sharing. She fears any bird flu vaccine created would be too expensive for developing nations.

Rich and poor countries were set to meet with WHO today in Jakarta to try to hammer out a compromise. But the standoff has raised a much bigger issue: equal access to drugs and technologies.

In January, Thailand broke the patents on a commercial AIDS drug and a heart medicine by using a World Trade Organization rule that allows countries to use generic drugs when faced with a national public health emergency.

UNAIDS estimates nearly 600,000 people are infected with HIV in Thailand, where the government has promised treatment for everyone.

Poor countries still do not have access to many vaccines, including seasonal flu shots often developed from viruses collected in Asia and shipped to the WHO database. Other vaccines routinely available in the West, including hepatitis B, are also too expensive for people in many countries.

An estimated 1.4 million children younger than 5 die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases, about a third from measles, according to WHO.