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While admitting much needs to be done, the WHO (World Health Organization) has released a report stating that some `encouraging progress' has been made in the quest for a human avian flu vaccine.
Still, as the report reminds us, current world production capabilities are only about 400 million doses. Woefully inadequate should a pandemic erupt.
This from the UN News Centre.
Bird flu: UN health agency reports ‘encouraging progress’ in producing vaccine
16 February 2007 – The United Nations health agency today reported “encouraging progress” in producing a vaccine against human bird flu, which in a worst case scenario could cause a deadly pandemic that could kill millions, but warned that the world still lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet potential global demand.
Experts meeting over the past two days at the UN World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters discussed latest developments, with 16 manufacturers from 10 countries developing prototype pandemic influenza vaccines against the H5N1 virus and five of them also focusing other bird flu strains such as H9N2, H5N2, and H5N3.
“For the first time, results presented at the meeting have convincingly demonstrated that vaccination with newly developed avian influenza vaccines can bring about a potentially protective immune response against strains of H5N1 virus found in a variety of geographical locations,” WHO said in a news release.
“Some of the vaccines work with low doses of antigen, which means that significantly more vaccine doses can be available in case of a pandemic,” it added.
But it warned that in spite of the encouraging progress, “the world still lacks the manufacturing capacity to meet potential global pandemic influenza vaccine demand as current capacity is estimated at less than 400 million doses per year of trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine.”
To counter this challenge, WHO last year launched the Global pandemic influenza action plan to increase vaccine supply, a $10-billion effort over a decade. One of its aims is to transfer technology to developing countries so they can set up their own influenza vaccine production units, providing them with the most sustainable and reliable response to the threat of pandemic influenza.
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