H5N1 – a strategic vaccine supply to keep the Indonesian virus in check?

[22 November 2007 - 12h17]

Should a strategic stock of flu vaccine be set up in Hong Kong? That in any case is what two American public health experts are proposing as a way of resolving on a long-term basis the ongoing issue of Indonesian flu virus samples. An alarming problem that is seriously holding up global flu vaccine manufacture.

Since the start of the year in fact, Indonesia has been negotiating with the WHO the terms on which it might hand over the viral strains gathered on its territory and that are essential for the production of flu vaccine. In return for “their” viruses, the Jakarta authorities are demanding access to quality vaccine at advantageous prices. But they have met with a categorical refusal by the WHO whose negotiations, as a last resort, involve offering technology transfer … over the long term.

This whole story might seem trivial were it not for the strategic importance of these infamous Indonesian viral strains to world vaccine production: Indonesia is of course situated in Asia, one of the two hot beds – along with sub-Saharan Africa – from which the flu pandemic is likely to emerge…

In view of the urgency of the situation, Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Professor David Fidler of the University of Indiana have proposed that a reserve stock of vaccine should be set up in Hong Kong: 500 million doses of vaccine, together with antiviral drugs, protective masks, gloves and germicides. The proposal put forward by these two experts for a genuine strategic supply for the whole of Asia, provided and managed by the international community, offers two definite advantages: firstly it ensures secure provision of vaccine for the countries of that region and secondly it avoids the WHO’s reference laboratories having to part with their property rights in the decrypted genomes…

Source : PLoS Medicine, 20 November 2007

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