a good read today and factual, page-4

09-26) 06:16 PDT BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) --

Hungary's health minister and two senior health officials were the first Monday to undergo bird-flu test vaccinations in this country.

Health Minister Jeno Racz, along with the country's chief health officer and the government's health care commissioner, were the first volunteers to receive the vaccine that Hungarian scientists developed against the H5N1 strain of the bird flu.

Human testing of H5N1 vaccines are already under way in other countries, such as the United States.

The first results of the Hungarian experiments are expected in three weeks when the immune system's reaction becomes discernible, said Laszlo Bujdoso, the chief health officer, at a news conference.

The new vaccine will only be widely introduced if bird flu and human flu viruses develop a mutated version that can spread from human to human, Bujdoso said.

Hungary has the capacity to produce 500,000 vaccinations per week in the event of a world epidemic, Bujdoso added.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, jumping to humans and killing at least 65 people — more than 40 of them in Vietnam — and resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of birds.