Indonesia, the country with the highest number of human deaths from the bird flu, remains reluctant to share samples of live bird flu virus for research.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Indonesia's withholding of such samples taken from infected humans, is hampering international efforts to develop a vaccine.
Indonesia at one point in May this year, resumed sending samples of the virus to the WHO but the three specimens sent to the agency's Tokyo office from Jakarta did not contain any live samples of the virus.
The WHO's Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases David Heymann, says a bird flu vaccine has more chance of being effective if it contains components of the Indonesian strain of the virus.
While Indonesian health officials continue to withhold their samples scientists cannot analyse possible mutations or new strains of the H5N1 virus needed to develop a vaccine.
Influenza vaccines must be reformulated each year to match the circulating strains because the virus mutates so often.
Heymann says Indonesia's scientists are putting their own country and the world in danger by their behaviour.
In December, Indonesia stopped sending samples of the H5N1 strain to WHO and foreign laboratories in order to prevent Western companies from producing private versions of a bird flu vaccine.
Indonesia officials justify such behaviour by suggesting that the West will use their strains to develop an expensive anti-bird flu vaccine unaffordable to poor countries.
Indonesian scientists are therefore insisting on an international guideline to protect Jakarta's access to any future vaccine.