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Indonesia is expected to be able to begin mass production of bird flu vaccine next year, Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih said on Wednesday.

State pharmaceutical company Bio Farma will start making the vaccine once its facilities are expanded, Endang said.

“At present Bio Farma is not yet producing because it needs to have its capacity expanded,” she said after signing a cooperation agreement with the Research and Technology Ministry. “If the funds are disbursed this year, the facility will be completed by the end of 2012.”

At the same occasion, Gumilar Sumantri, the University of Indonesia (UI) rector, handed over a prototype of the bird flu vaccine that Bio Farma will eventually use for production.

“UI provided the vaccine, Bio Farma will produce it and the government will be the one to purchase it,” the minister said.

Bio Farma president director Iskandar said that with the UI prototype, the company would not have to come up with its own vaccine, which would have taken about 15 years.

“The presenting of the avian influenza vaccine prototype is early support from the government for Bio Farma in the framework of accelerating vaccine research,” Iskandar said.

He said Bio Farma had reestablished the National Vaccine Research Forum (FRVN) to accelerate the development of vaccines.

The forum, he said, now had eight consortia comprising academics and researchers who were working on developing various vaccines to fight diseases including dengue, malaria, HIV/AIDS, rotavirus, avian flu, pneumococcus and new TB.

“The bird flu research consortium had produced a vaccine prototype through joint research that started in 2011,” Endang said, adding that funding came from the Ministry of Research and Technology.

Bird flu has hit Indonesia harder than any other country, with 150 deaths reported here between 2003 and 2011, according to the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, an 18-year-old man who had recently been declared not to have been infected with bird flu after he was tested twice died of respiratory problems on Wednesday.

Rohmad from Mekarsari in Tangerang district died on Wednesday in the isolation ward at Tangerang General Hospital. The patient had come from another hospital and was already in a critical condition when admitted.

Bird flu has already claimed two lives this year: a 23-year old man from North Jakarta and his 5-year-old niece.