Flu vaccine production lags as death toll mounts

SWITzERLAND: Production of swine flu vaccines will fall “substantially” short of the amount needed to protect the global population, the World Health Organisation warned Friday as the pandemic death toll rose.

“Current supplies of pandemic vaccine are inadequate for a world population in which virtually everyone is susceptible to infection by a new and readily contagious virus,” WHO director general Margaret Chan said in a statement.Despite new evidence that only one dose of the vaccines currently being tested will be enough for most people, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said output next year will be “substantially less” than the 4.9 billion doses annual production forecast.

Some 25 pharmaceutical laboratories working on vaccines have indicated that weekly production is lower than 94 million doses, he said. In May, the WHO had forecast a weekly output of 94.3 million doses if full scale vaccine production was launched.

But pharmaceutical companies have in recent weeks slashed their production expectations due to poorer than expected yields from the so-called “seed virus” strains developed by WHO-approved laboratories. Amid growing fears that poorer nations will not get enough vaccines, the United States led nine countries which on Thursday pledged to make 10 percent of their swine flu vaccine supply available to other nations in need.

Geneva, Sunday, AFP