glaxo may donate relenza to who
Drugs plug gap as world awaits bird flu vaccine
By Ben Hirschler Reuters Tuesday, September 13, 2005; 8:11 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists believe they have the know-how to make an effective vaccine against pandemic bird flu; the problem is how to make enough of it.
As avian flu spreads from Asia into Siberia and Kazakhstan, health experts are increasingly focused on the medical challenge of fighting the disease should it "go human" and start to spread easily from person to person.
But current global manufacturing capacity, at around 300 million regular flu doses a year, is simply insufficient to meet global needs during a pandemic.
"If you need to vaccinate the whole world, you are not going to do that with existing capacity, which is basically aimed at the over-65s in the West," said Tony Colegate of Chiron Corp, who coordinates production issues for the Influenza Vaccine Supply Task Force, an international industry group.
Adding new production will take time, raising fears that many poor parts of the world are likely to go without.
At present, 90 percent of capacity is concentrated in Europe and North America, and the World Health Organization (WHO) says past experience suggests governments will be reluctant to release supplies for export before domestic demand is fully met.
There will also be a hiatus of four to six months while factories switch to making a pandemic version, once a new strain of humanized bird flu is identified.
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In the absence of a vaccine, the job of holding pandemic flu at bay will rest largely on a limited stockpile of antiviral drugs, called neuraminidase inhibitors, that can reduce the severity of flu infection and can speed patients' recovery.
This could buy valuable time to produce a vaccine and introduce other emergency measures, according to the WHO, which accepted a donation of 3 million doses of Swiss drug firm Roche's Tamiflu medicine in August.
Britain's GlaxoSmithKline says it may make a similar, but smaller, donation of its drug Relenza.
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