Poverty hampering access to vaccine: WHO chief

EPIDEMICS

Australia orders 21 million swine flu vaccines
Australia ordered 21 million courses of swine flu vaccine Tuesday -- enough to cover the country's entire population -- as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the pandemic was "unstoppable." Although a vaccine is not expected to be available until at least September, federal chief medical officer Jim Bishop said the government hoped to launch a major immunisation program in October to combat the progress of the virus. Australia is already the worst-hit nation in the Asia-Pacific region, with almost 10,000 cases and 19 virus-linked deaths, and Bishop expressed concern that the "hard-edged" disease was now infecting young and healthy people. "We are seeing a few people now thrown up that have other medical conditions being unwell, (but) also we are seeing a few people that were previously well but are severely affected by the disease," Bishop said. "Almost all of those swine flu deaths have been in people with prior medical conditions which have been exacerbated but, as I said, there will be now some experience with unfortunately people who have been previously well," he added. Six people younger than 40 who had otherwise been healthy were on life support in Sydney, with A(H1N1) influenza damaging their lungs so badly they had to be put on special machines to oxygenate their blood, officials said. The WHO said Monday a vaccine should be available as early as September, warning that the pandemic was now "unstoppable," with more than 90,000 cases reported, including 429 deaths. Although a vaccine is not yet available, Canberra has commissioned pharmaceutical company CSL to manufacture it, following trials. "We need to do some trials to make sure it's safe, so we're saying by October we should be able to start a program, but that depends really on manufacture being successful," Bishop said. He said 21 million doses would be enough to vaccinate everyone in Australia once over, or half the population if two courses were required, ahead of a "second wave" of infections. "(Swine flu) does have a hard edge ... it's not like seasonal flu, it's a bit more worrying than that," he said. "We're more concerned about the second wave of this thing, which might be more severe than the first." A US study released this week warned A(H1N1) could pick up genes from other flu strains that would enable it to be both highly virulent and contagious, or acquire mutations enabling it to be resistant to the anti-viral drug Tamiflu.

by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) July 14, 2009
World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan on Tuesday warned that poverty will prevent some countries from gaining access to swine flu vaccines, as she criticised a bias in favour of richer nations.

"Manufacturing capacity for influenza vaccines is finite and woefully inadequate for a world of 6.8 billion people, nearly all of whom are susceptible to infection by this entirely new and highly contagious virus," she told delegates attending a World Intellectual Property Organisation conference.

"The lion's share of these limited supplies will go to wealthy countries. Again we see the advantage of affluence. Again we see access denied by an inability to pay," added.

"In the field of health, public policy will remain imperfect as long as access to life-saving interventions is biased in favour of affluence," Chan told the WIPO conference.

Chan's remarks came a day after a senior WHO official said that all countries will need access to vaccines against the "unstoppable" A(H1N1) influenza pandemic.

During a meeting on swine flu earlier July, developing countries and the WHO called for measures to ensure that poorer nations were also given access to the vaccine.

The WHO says it is negotiating with vaccine producers to secure donations or sales at lower prices for developing countries, while richer nations are being asked to donate some of their vaccine stocks.

Chan said then that thanks to an agreement "with two companies, 250 million doses" will be sent to developing countries, an amount that she acknowledged "is obviously not enough."

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EPIDEMICS

Swine flu virus linked to more lung damage: lab study
Paris (AFP) July 13, 2009
The A(H1N1) "swine flu" virus causes more lung damage than ordinary seasonal flu strains but still responds to antiviral drugs, according to a study on lab animals released on Monday. Virologists led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin at Madison tested H1N1, taken from patients in the United States, as well as several seasonal flu viruses on mice, ferrets, macaque monkeys ... read more

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