# 2000
It is understandable that, with avian flu continuing to spread globally, non-vaccine producing nations are about as nervous as a long-tailed-cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
They know that a pandemic, unmitigated by a vaccine, would cut a terrible swath through any country. Death and misery, along with economic and political upheavals, are all but inevitable.
Obtaining sufficient quantities of bird flu vaccine, therefore, is a national security issue of the highest magnitude.
Unfortunately, the demands for `fair access' to cheap vaccines has one major hitch. Right now our yearly global manufacturing capacity for influenza vaccine will only cover 750 million people, and that assumes that everything goes right.
That's enough for about 11% of the world's population.
There are new cell culture manufacturing techniques under development, and the hopes are that someday they may yield far more vaccine, but that may be years away.
I covered the cold equations involved in vaccine production earlier today here. The only real solution is to ramp up our manufacturing capability, and form partnerships with developing countries to help them build their own manufacturing plants.
This report from the Times of India.
India to part with flu data only if it gets cheap vaccines
18 May 2008, 0331 hrs IST
,
NEW DELHI: Indonesia — the nation with the highest rates of infection and deaths in humans from the highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) — has found a friend in India, on the controversial issue of sharing the deadly H5N1 virus.
Union health minister A Ramadoss, who is heading the Indian delegation to the World Health Assembly (WHA), will pressurise the WHO to guarantee benefits like access to cheap vaccines made from the virulent virus strains, circulating in developing countries.
"Until such benefits are guaranteed, developing countries like India and Indonesia cannot feel confident about sharing the genetic make up of such viruses," Ramadoss told TOI.
India, which has had multiple outbreaks of AI among poultry in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Manipur, West Bengal and Tripura is yet to report a single human case. The 61st WHA that kicks off in Geneva from May 19 will see 193 member countries take another crack at resolving the long standing dispute of virus sharing.
The lingering stalemate was triggered when Indonesia refused to supply H5N1 viruses to the WHO’s 50-year-old Global Influenza Surveillance Network in January 2007 fearing pharmaceutical companies would develop vaccines that would be too costly for poor countries to afford.
