JAKARTA : Two people in Indonesia died after testing positive for bird flu, with further tests being conducted to confirm the initial results, the country's health ministry said Tuesday.

A 22-year-old female university student died on Saturday and a teenage boy on Sunday, a spokeswoman from the ministry's bird flu information centre said.

A 39-year-old man had also tested positive preliminarily and was being treated in Surabaya, the country's second largest city, the centre said.

The deaths would take the toll in the country worst-hit by the disease to 68 if the virus is confirmed as the cause of death.

Most human cases have occurred after contact with sick birds. Indonesia has banned the popular practice of keeping chickens in backyards in the capital, Jakarta, in a bid to curb more human cases.

The city is currently hosting a World Health Organisation (WHO) bird flu meeting intended to resolve a dispute between the UN body and Indonesia over sharing virus samples for key tests.

Indonesia wants new rules to govern the development of human vaccines from the samples to ensure that poorer nations can afford them.

It fears multinational drugs firms will otherwise produce expensive treatments.

"The system places developing countries at a potential disadvantage in terms of price access and supplies," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Monday. "The laws of the system should be modified."

Indonesia said in February that it had stopped sharing samples with WHO reference laboratories, a process said key to fighting human flu.

It wants a legal guarantee that they will not be exploited for profit before resuming.

Indonesia has already signed a cooperation agreement with US company Baxter International to jointly develop a human bird flu vaccine in a bid to ensure it benefits from a future treatment.

The WHO says the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has infected 281 people and killed 169 of them, mostly in Southeast Asia.

Scientists say multiple strains of the disease originated in southern China and spread elsewhere.

They worry the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily spread among humans, leading to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions.

The fear stems from the lessons of past influenza pandemics.

One in 1918, just after the end of World War I, killed 20 million people worldwide. - AFP/ch