Bird flu vaccine impossible until after pandemic appears: UN official
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060215/hl_afp/healthfluunvaccineukraine_060215
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KIEV (AFP) - A bird flu vaccine cannot be produced until the virus mutates to pass from human to human and then would take months to manufacture in sufficient quantities, the United Nations' top influenza official said.
"We cannot have a vaccine against a pandemic virus until the pandemic virus appears," David Nabarro, the UN senior coordinator for avian and human influenza told reporters in Kiev on Wednesday, where he is on a two-day visit.
"And then there will be an interval of perhaps six months until we have a reasonable quantity of vaccine," Nabarro said.
The H5N1 avian flu strain -- which has recently spread to several European Union countries and Africa -- has killed at least 90 people, about half of those who have contracted it. Most of the deaths have occurred in eastern Asia, but also in Turkey and northern Iraq.
So far, victims have caught the virus from close contact with infected poultry.
But experts are worried that if the H5N1 strain acquires genetic material from a human influenza virus and becomes easily transmittable between humans, it could kill millions of people in a worldwide pandemic.
Health officials do not know when, or even if, such a mutation will take place.
"Unfortunately I can't give you any precise information as to when the mutation of H5N1 to a form that can be transmitted between humans will actually take place," Nabarro said.
"Indeed it's something that is still an issue for which we have to be prepared, but we cannot be at all certain when, or even if, the mutation will occur," he said.
Ukraine first registered an outbreak of the H5N1 virus last December, among domestic poultry in Crimea. It has not recorded any cases of humans catching the strain.
