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Global Vaccine Production: A Long Way To Go

 

 

# 4588

 

Over the past five years we’ve heard a number of optimistic assessments of global pandemic vaccine production and delivery by the WHO (World Health Organization).

 

Numbers that, quite frankly, have always been based on a `best case scenario’.  

 

Since it would be unseemly for me to list all of my blogs over the years that questioned some of these fanciful projections, I’ll take the high road here and refer you to Maryn McKenna’s terrific award winning 7-part series entitled the Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle which she wrote for CIDRAP way back in 2007.

 

A series that remains just as relevant today as when she wrote it.

 

Part 1: Flu research: a legacy of neglect
Part 2: Vaccine production capacity falls far short
Part 3: H5N1 poses major immunologic challenges
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvants
Part 5: What role for prepandemic vaccination?
Part 6: Looking to novel vaccine technologies
Part 7: Time for a vaccine 'Manhattan Project'?
Bibliography

 

 

Last night, Robert Roos, News Editor for CIDRAP wrote a piece on a WHO review of vaccine production during this past year’s pandemic.  It’s a very good read, so follow the link.

 

 

WHO: Pandemic showed limits of vaccine production capacity

 

Robert Roos * News Editor

May 21, 2010 (CIDRAP News) – Global production of the H1N1 influenza vaccine has made clear that the world still has a long way to go to meet pandemic production capacity goals set by the World Health Organization (WHO) 4 years ago, WHO experts said in a report released this week.

In 2006 the WHO set a goal of having enough vaccine for 2 billion people within 6 months after a pandemic vaccine strain is supplied to industry. By Dec 1, 2009, which marked the 6-month milestone for the H1N1 pandemic, global production reached just 534 million doses, according to the "in press" report published online May 18 by Vaccine.

 

The report, based on a survey of all flu vaccine manufacturers, says further, "The forecasted production of pandemic vaccine 12 months after the availability of the vaccine virus (i.e., June 2010) is approximately 1.37 billion doses, which is only 28% of the annual global production capacity of 4.9 billion doses estimated from the WHO survey conducted n May 2009." It was authored by Jeffrey Partridge and Marie Paule Kieny of the WHO H1N1 Influenza Vaccine Task Force.

 

(Continue . . . )

 

 

Of course, production capacity isn’t enough. 

 

You have to have the global public health infrastructure in place to deliver the vaccine to the arms of the public, once it is created.  And money for that is in distressingly short supply.


As pandemics go, we were very lucky this time.  Novel H1N1 wasn’t as virulent as some feared.  Next time, we may not be so lucky.

 

Hopefully we’ve got time to improve the system, to make the technological advances, and to make the right investments. 

 

But we are working against a time clock we can’t see. 

 

If and when a severe pandemic does come, it is better to be ready years too soon rather than six months too late. 

Related Post:

CIDRAP
Maryn McKenna
Vaccine

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