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WHO emphasises safety of pandemic flu vaccines

US unveils prevention guidelines in flu fight
The United States unveiled guidelines Friday aimed at curbing the spread of 2009 H1N1 influenza in schools. A response will depend on the scope of an outbreak, but "for an outbreak similar in severity to the spring 2009 H1N1 infection, the guidelines recommend basic good hygiene, such as hand washing," a Homeland Security statement said. "In addition, students or staff members with flu-like illness (showing symptoms of flu) should stay home at least 24 hours after fever symptoms have ended," it added. "We're going to continue to do everything possible to keep our children and all Americans healthy and safe this fall," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

The new US guidelines also recommend schools set up plans to deal with possible infection. "For instance, people with flu-like illness should be sent to a room away from other people until they can be sent home. Schools should have plans for continuing the education of students who are at home, through phone calls, homework packets, Internet lessons and other approaches," the statement added. Swine flu joins Mexican drug trafficking and climate change on a packed agenda of talks between North American leaders in Mexico this weekend. Joint measures to contain swine flu, which hobbled Mexico's tourism industry after it broke out in April, are also a key concern on the continent worst hit by A(H1N1).

Egypt to order five million doses of swine flu vaccine
Egypt is to order five million doses of swine flu vaccine, Deputy Health Minister Nasser al-Sayyed told AFP on Friday, sufficient to immunise 2.5 million of Egypt's nearly 80 million population. "Egypt will buy five million doses as soon as the vaccine becomes available," Sayyed said, adding that the order could be increased to 10 million doses depending on the evolution of the (A)H1N1 virus over the winter. As of Thursday evening, Egypt had recorded 329 cases of swine flu. There has been just one death -- a woman returning from a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia. Egypt angered animal welfare groups by ordering a cull of the nation's entire pig herd of 250,000 animals after the first swine flu case was recorded in early June, a move the World Health Organisation has said was unnecessary.

But health officials have since played down the threat from swine flu, in a country that has been the worst hit outside Asia by H5N1 bird flu, with 27 deaths reported since 2006. "The virus at its current status is very mild and can simply be treated with an aspirin and a few days resting at home," Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali told the English-language Daily News Egypt. "So I will not buy a vaccine that costs the country millions of dollars unless it is needed," he added.

by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) Aug 6, 2009
The World Health Organisation moved to reassure the public about the safety of pandemic flu vaccines on Thursday, emphasising that rigorous precautions were taken despite the speed of their development.

"The public needs to be reassured that regulatory procedures in place for the licensing of pandemic vaccines, including procedures for expediting regulatory approval, are rigorous and do not compromise safety or quality controls," said the UN health agency on its website.

Although many national regulators had fast-tracked procedures for approval, the swine flu vaccine was built on the same technology used to produce vaccines for frequently changing strains of seasonal influenza, it said.

The streamlined process was established in the WHO's 2007 pandemic preparedness plan, agreed by health experts, regulators and vaccine makers to ensure that a flu vaccine for a pandemic strain was available quickly and in large quantities.

"During the 1957 and 1968 pandemics, vaccines arrived too late to be used as an effective mitigation tool during the more severe phases of the pandemics," the WHO said.

Influenza vaccines were not available in the deadliest flu pandemic on record in 1918, when Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million people.

The WHO advised all countries to carry on intensive testing and monitoring of vaccines even after they start to be administered.

While some serious adverse effects had been reported over the 60 years that flu vaccines have been used "these have been rare", it said.

Nonetheless, the WHO said "special safety issues will inevitably arise during a pandemic" because of the massive scale on which a vaccine would be administered.

"For example, adverse events too rare to show up even in a large clinical trial may become apparent when very large numbers of people receive a pandemic vaccine," the WHO added.

Countries have been ordering tens of millions of doses of vaccine for the A(H1N1) virus for mass vaccination campaigns, while clinical trials are usually carried out on thousands of volunteers.

The trials have began in Australia, Britain, China, Germany and the United States, WHO's director of vaccine research Marie-Paule Kieny said.

"We expect more clinical trials to start in the days to come," she said, adding that first results of the trials should be collected in September.

Regulators will then have to approve the vaccine before it would be made available to the public.

If regulators were to approve the vaccine "in September, then it is possible that some countries (will) start vaccinating in September," said Kieny.

She said that manufacturers have reported that vaccine virus strains are currently generating "disappointing" yields.

Yields are now just between a third or half of what is usually obtained in a seasonal strain, meaning that this could result in a reduction in production capacity of the vaccine.

A recent batch of vaccine viruses produced appears to contain a strain which seems to be getting equivalent yields as the seasonal vaccine, said Kieny.

"I don't want to say too early that the question has been resolved but it really means that we have found a way to go around the problem," she said.

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