Indonesia has resumed sending samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus to the World Health Organization, the country's health minister said Tuesday in calling for a share of any commercial vaccines that result.

A dispute over the sharing of bird flu samples in Indonesia, one of the countries worst affected by H5N1, has hampered WHO's efforts to get nations to prepare for a potential pandemic if the virus mutates into a form that spreads easily among people.

Poor countries provide virus samples that are used to develop commercial vaccines, but those nations often cannot afford to buy the vaccines, Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari told the agency's annual World Health Assembly in Geneva.

"There is an unfair mechanism in which avian flu virus samples are provided free by developing countries but drug companies patented this vaccine and are selling them at unaffordable cost for the developing countries," Supari told delegates.

"Sequences had been used for some parties for instance through research presentation, publication, commercialization, and request for patents without our consent. Such practice violates the spirit in which virus is given."

In Indonesia, 75 people have died from the H5N1, according to WHO. The government stopped sharing virus samples with international laboratories in December, saying it felt exploited to multinational drug companies.

International scientists use the samples to check whether the virus is mutating into a more dangerous form.

Supari said Indonesia resumed sending H5N1 virus samples to a WHO centre in Tokyo last week.

Keiji Fukuda of the WHO's global influenza program said steps were being taken to improve transparency and equity. A new formula for sharing samples and the benefits is due by the end of June.

Avian flu remains largely an infection in birds. Since 2003, the H5N1 strain as infected at least 282 people worldwide and killed about 170 of them, mostly in Southeast Asia, according to WHO.