Pensito Flu Update: May 4, 2009 — The Vaccine Gamble
From ProMed:
When World Health Organization [WHO] officials ask vaccine manufacturers to start producing vaccine to fight swine flu in a few weeks, they will be taking a calculated risk. Flu vaccine companies can only make one vaccine at a time: either seasonal flu vaccine or pandemic vaccine. Production takes months and it is impossible to
switch halfway through if health officials make a mistake. While some countries like the United States may be better prepared than others American officials say production for next year’s vaccine batch is so advanced they’re nearly finished, whereas the situation for many other countries is unknown.
About 70 percent of the world’s flu vaccines are made in Europe, and the WHO is trying to figure out how many doses of seasonal flu vaccine remain worldwide before asking vaccine manufacturers to start pumping out pandemic vaccine instead.
“It’s a big decision … We’ve never done this before,” said Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research.
Kieny said the decision would be like guessing which vaccine the world will need most, but that the WHO would try to hedge its bets by tallying existing seasonal flu vaccine stocks. “We are gambling whether or not we will have enough seasonal vaccine, but it will not be an ‘either-or’ situation,” she said.
