Flu experts call for more spending on vaccine development
Large amounts of money need to be spent by governments around the world on developing prospective influenza vaccines for which there are no real commercial prospects, a World Health Organization meeting
of experts on flu has concluded.
The meeting last week in Geneva concluded that preparations for a global
flu pandemic should be part of national emergency planning world-wide.
At least €10m needs to be spent on each of a number of possible seed
vaccines so that the right vaccine can be produced quickly once the global
pandemic strain has been identified.
The pandemic virus, when it emerges, can be expected to travel around
the world in between three and six months. This is less than the six
to eight months that companies will need to test and license any new
vaccine from a standing start.
“We have no time to lose to do everything that can be done before
the pandemic,” Klaus Stöhr, WHO global influenza programme
co-ordinator, said after the meeting. “There is a long way to go
before pandemic vaccines will be available for a large part of the population,
but we
don’t have a lot of time. We have in Asia an H5N1 [avian flu] virus
which is ready to cause a pandemic.”
The expected scenario in a flu pandemic is that between 25 per cent and
30 per cent of the global population will catch the disease and that
1 per cent of these will die. In the most recent flu pandemic in 1918,
the death rate was 2.6 per cent.
Preventing the pandemic will demand 6.2 billion doses of vaccine. The
maximum number of doses that can be produced using current global production
capacity is no more than 300 million for the annual flu season. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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