WHO reports development of influenza vaccine

Malaysia Sun (ANI) Saturday 17th February, 2007

Geneva, Feb 17: The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported encouraging progress in the development of avian influenza vaccine.

At a two-day WHO meeting in Brussels, experts demonstrated that newly developed avian influenza vaccines could bring about a potentially protective immune response against strains of H5N1 virus found in various geographical locations on earth.

Some of the vaccines work with low doses of antigen, which effectively means that significantly more vaccine doses can be available in case of a pandemic.

This was a third such meeting in just two years and its objective was to review the progress in the development of candidate vaccines against the pandemic avian influenza (bird flu) viruses and to reach consensus on future priority activities.

More than 100 influenza vaccine experts-from the academia, national and regional public health institutions, the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory bodies throughout the world-attended the meeting convened by the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research and the WHO Global Influenza Programme.

Information on more than 20 projects were presented and discussed. Most manufacturers are using reference vaccine strains corresponding to H5N1 viruses provided by WHO Collaborating Centres.

In spite of the encouraging progress noted at the WHO meeting, the organization has stressed that the world still lacked 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.

It is reported that 16 manufacturers from ten countries are developing prototype pandemic influenza vaccines against H5N1 avian influenza virus.

Presently, more then 40 clinical trials have been completed or are ongoing. Most of them have focused on healthy adults. Some companies, after completing safety analyses in adults, have initiated clinical trials in the elderly and in children. All vaccines were safe and well tolerated in all age groups tested.