WHO plans to stockpile bird flu vaccines for the poor

The World Health Organization calculated that roughly 60 million doses of bird flu vaccines will be needed by developing countries to protect 1% of their populations.

Today, WHO announced that it just might help build that needed stockpile.

Countries led by Indonesia and Thailand have demanded in previous months that bird flu vaccines be made affordable for poorer countries for essential workers and first responders in the event of a flu pandemic. Of course 60 million doses will be inadequate, but coupled with the $15 million grant to develop domestic vaccines, at least this is a good start for those that don’t have resources to prepare for a pandemic.

Now if one calculates the global manufacturing capacity for a pandemic vaccine, about 500 million doses of a trivalent vaccine will be needed each year of pandemic. With a single strain vaccine, the stockpile escalates to 1.5 billion.

Obviously, that’s not enough for everyone on this planet. I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen if that day comes. God help us all.

[source: Alertnet; image:30mins]

Tags: pandemic, vaccine, Indonesia, stockpile