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UK: 2 FIRMS CONTRACTED TO PRODUCE 3.5M BIRD FLU VACCINE DOSES TO PROTECT HUMANS February 26, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) The British government has awarded multi-million pound contracts to two companies to make a vaccine against bird flu in humans.
At lest 3.5 mil! lion doses of the vaccine will be produced by British pharmaceutical firms Chiron and Baxter to protect humans against the H5N1 strain. The two firms were commissioned by the Department of Health
The EU health ministers met in Vienna to discuss how to fight the spread of the virus, which has so far affected eight European countries.
All outbreaks have been in wild swans or ducks, but on Thursday the owner of an indoor turkey farm, in the same region where the H5N1 virus was found in wild ducks, alerted authorities to abnormally high death rates in his flock of more than 11,000 birds. His entire flock has been slaughtered and other emergency containment measures to isolate the area were triggered pending confirmation of an H5N1 infection.
If test results confirm the outbreak, it will mark the first time the current bird flu scare has hit commercial poultry stocks.
According to Channel 4 News, once the human vaccine has been produced, 3.5 million doses would be given to British health workers in the event of a pandemic. British health minister Rosie Winterton however conceded that a vaccine could be of little use.
"It is certainly true that if the H5N1 virus developed into a virus that could be passed between humans, you couldn't be absolutely clear that an H5N1 vaccine would be appropriateâ€. Ms Winterton told BBC Radio 4's Today programme
"If a human pandemic does develop, we would have to look at that point at the virus and then develop a vaccine from that. There is no guarantee that a vaccine would be appropriate in those circumstances. But we are working very closely to make sure that if it did turn into a virus that could be transferred between humans that we would be able to work very quickly with industry to develop a vaccine."
Ms Winterton insisted the UK was one of the best prepared countries in the world for the possibility of a pandemic. The Government has already commissioned 14.6 million batches of the Tamiflu anti-viral drug, which reduces the severity of bird flu symptoms.