|
Bird flu vaccine tested
22/12/2005 11:33 - (SA)
Beijing - China began human trials of a bird flu vaccine this week, giving six Chinese volunteers shots of the experimental immunisation against the deadly virus, state media said on Thursday.
The volunteers, who were given shots of the vaccine on Wednesday, are the first batch of 120 volunteers chosen from healthy people between the age of 18 to 60 from Beijing, the Xinhua news agency said.
They reported no negative reaction within half an hour of getting the inoculation.
The vaccine is jointly developed by the Beijing-based pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech Co and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
The experiments will last nine months, but preliminary conclusions are expected in around three months.
It is expected to take at least a year before the vaccine finishes its two-phase clinical trials, the company's spokesperson Lu Zhenyou said last month.
If approved, the vaccine will first be used on high-risk groups such as veterinary and laboratory workers and poultry farmers in afflicted regions, he was quoted as saying.
It would be cheaper than normal flu jabs.
Various companies around the world are trying to develop a vaccine against the virus.
The World Health Organisation's top official in China said last month vaccines being developed to protect people against bird flu might be useless in a pandemic as the virus would have mutated.
It was difficult to predict how the virus would mutate and it could take months before a new vaccine is produced.
China has reported six human cases of bird flu, two of whom have died.
Despite the toll, China is seen as having escaped relatively lightly from the bird flu virus, which has killed more than 70 people in Asia since 2003.
The deadly H5N1 virus has spread across China among poultry.
Even so, China is seen as a potential flashpoint for a feared global pandemic because it has the world's biggest poultry population combined with often primitive farming conditions.
- AFP
|
