Vaccination shortcomings

Courses of bird flu vaccination are still in worryingly short supply, but production capacity is set to improve with technological advances, say experts at the World Health Organization (WHO).

The progress was reported this month at the first meeting of a WHO advisory group on bird flu vaccination production. Improve-ments in production capacity will basically stem from the ability to create more vaccines from fewer antigens, the molecules that provoke an immune response, says a WHO official.

"We want to increase the vaccine supply. The group recognised that there is a major gap between potential demand and the actual supply," he says.

With the advent of new techniques requiring up to eight times less antigen, production capacity is set to rise to 4.5 billion courses per year in 2010. Scientists had previously held that only 100 million vaccination courses could be pumped out immediately using standard technology.

New figures are, however, still far from the 6.7 billion immunisation courses that would be needed over a six-month period to protect the whole world in the event of a pandemic.

Experts are afraid millions of people could be killed if the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus mutated into a form which allowed it to be transmitted from humans to humans. UN bird flu co-ordinator David Nabarro said last week that two to three years’ more work was needed before the world could cope with a pandemic.

If the H5N1 virus were to mutate, current vaccines would have to be fine-tuned, a process that could take several months.

Courses of bird flu vaccination are still in worryingly short supply, but production capacity is set to improve with technological advances, say experts at the World Health Organization (WHO).