WHO And Vaccine Producers Refuse To Prepare For New Spanish Flu

May 16, 2008 (LPAC)—May 15, 2009 (Nouvelle Solidarite), Paris -- An important meeting was held yesterday at the World Health Organization's Geneva headquarters, in order to determine whether to start producing a vaccine for coming, new, deadly A/H1N1 flu pandemic.

Behind WHO assistant director general and flu chief Keiji Fukuda's statement that it is "impossible to determine at what date a decision will be taken," a huge fight is on. Besides real scientific bottlenecks, the real story is that laboratories are fighting to keep their "markets," and the simple fact is that globalization has created a situation where adequate production capacities for vaccine are nonexistent! Of course, WHO justifies its Phase 5 ("imminent pandemic") designation by saying that only two autonomous foci of contagion exist on the American continent. But, in reality, according to WHO's own guidelines, Phase 6 ("full-blown pandemic," making vaccine production mandatory), has to start as soon as a second epidemic focus is identified.

In an interview with the French daily La Croix, Doctor Albert Garcia, of one of the world's largest vaccine producers, Sanofi-Pasteur, said that "nobody knows how this virus is going to evolve; all scenarios are possible." "Whether one single vaccine, efficient against both the seasonal flu and the new one, can be produced, remains to be seen."

"Technically this is feasible," says Garcia, but producing a vaccine with a single strain (that of the new virus) would be preferable and easier "in case of a pandemic, [when] a huge number of doses have to be produced at a rapid pace."

Asked why WHO is still hesitating, Garcia says that "the decision is not an easy one. To prioritize the production of a new vaccine, firms have to slow down, even to stop completely the production of the vaccine against the seasonal flu they are currently in the process of producing. This is not without consequences, since the seasonal flu in not harmless and takes the lives of between 250,000 and 500,000 people yearly in the world, and between 2,000 and 6,000 in France."

According to La Croix, WHO wants a better evaluation of the threat before deciding. If the new virus seems not so aggressive now, specialists do not exclude that by successive mutations it will increase its virulence over the coming months. Anti-viral drugs could then turn out to be inefficient and vaccination indispensable, they write.

WHO investigated Adrian Gibbs' hypothesis that the virus is a "laboratory escapee," but is now certain that "the virus was not created in a laboratory." As of May 15, 34 countries had reported a total of 7,520 cases, of which 4,298 were in the US. A teacher is in critical condition in New York, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the closing of three schools, with 4,400 pupils, in the borough of Queens.