WHO Working on Vaccine for Deadly Avian Flu

To protect humans against a new strain of avian flu that has killed all five humans infected to date, the World Health Organization (Geneva, Switzerland) is moving forward with procedures to rapidly produce a new influenza vaccine.

The human deaths coincide with unprecedented epidemics in birds of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in Viet Nam, Korea, and Japan. The epidemic in birds is the first in Japan since 1925 and the first ever documented in Viet Nam and Korea.

Prototype viruses for vaccine production are being prepared by laboratories in the WHO Global Influenza Network. Laboratories in Hong Kong and Japan have isolated the virus from specimens obtained from two of the human fatal cases in Viet Nam. The virus is being analyzed at the molecular level to obtain information about its origin and its relationship to viruses currently circulating in birds and possibly other animals.

The studies will also determine the antigenic and genetic characteristics of the virus that are needed to produce a vaccine candidate. Using laboratories in the WHO influenza network and following procedures established by WHO to detect and respond to a new influenza virus subtype, a prototype virus could be made available to vaccine manufacturers within about four weeks.




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