Letter from Dr. Jo - No. 1: Twenty One patients with bird influenza in Hasan Sadikin?

Dear Dr. Kadarsyah,

I just spoke with Hans Jeekel and he told me that he heard that Hasan Sadikin has no less than 21 patients with flu symptoms, at least 4 or 6 of which have known infections with H5N1. This is quite a lot it seems to me and perhaps the hospital in Southeast Asia with the highest number of such patients. Please find out about the numbers of such patients in ALL hospitals in Indonesia ASAP. Pak Jacob just told me on the phone when making his first oral report of the trip to me, that he thought that UNPAD was the designated center in Indonesia for this disease? Is that so?

Prof. Dr. Ab Osterhaus - world reknown influenza specialist - according to Hans the only present day candidate for a Nobel Prize in Medicine of the Erasmus MC, with 550 publications since 1970 has been informed by emails from me and from him today that most likely a research program based on the patients at UNPAD could be initiated. If of course the Indonesian doctors agree.

It seems to me that he would love to test for the avian virus all these patients and also for regular human influenza infections as well. Simply because in case of patients with double infections a most dangerous recombinant virus could be generated within the cells of such patients through recombination of the viral genomes. Such a recombinant could combine the superior transmission capacity of the human virus to other humans with the killing efficacy of the avian virus, the basis for a pandemic.

The person who finds such a recombinant first may be able to initiate the preparation of a suitable vaccin based on the recombinant Hemaglutinin (H) and Neuraminidase (N) proteins of the viral envelop. The person who finds the recombinant and knows what to do, has the lab capability to do it, is a potential Nobel Prize winner.

And is it not about time that a Dutchman like Christiaan Eijkman working with an Indonesian disease (beri-beri) wins a Nobel Prize again together with his co-investigator from Indonesia itself. Is that not what we both were aiming at when we worked together in Bandung during our rich days?

More than ever we can now continue what we set out to do in the first place. Communication is the name of the game at this point and we should realize this and do it professionally.

So an invitation for an internist to come to Bandung for one month to get clinical experience should be followed by a grant/project to be written within the next three months, followed by an intensive research on both sides, at UNPAD and at the Erasmus MC.

Greetings, Dr. Jo