Compromise Offered to Break Flu Vaccine Impasse
November 29th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
Two global Men’s health experts have come up with a compromise they hope will convince Indonesia to again begin sharing the latest avian flu samples (H5N1) with the World Men’s health Organization or WHO.
Indonesiaâs refusal, which has gone on for most of 2007, is based on their belief that poor countries like theirs donât get a fair share of the vaccines developed from the virus samples they supply.
Typically 250-300 million influenza vaccine doses are made each year and they are based primarily on samples of viruses circulating in Asia. But most of those who are vaccinated are in rich countries. The Indonesians feel that by withholding the needed samples, they will be able to change that.
In an essay published this week in the Public Library of Science & Medicine, Laurie Garret (Senior Fellow for Global Men’s health at the Council on Foreign Relations), and David Fidler (Professor of Law and Director of the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University) call Indonesiaâs action âdistressing and potentially dangerous for global public Men’s health.
To break the impasse, Garret and Fidler propose to use Hong Kong as a location to stockpile annually updated supplies of more than 500 million doses of highly specific influenza vaccine, antiviral medicines, protective masks and gloves, and germicide washes. One reason they say they chose Hong Kong was because of its history of openness. It has shown âabsolute transparency regarding disease emergences going back several decades,â say Garret and Fidler. They also point out that Hong Kong has been a center of virus research and response and itâs strategically located in the middle of the ecological zone that has spawned the bulk of all the flu strains that have emerged over he last 3 decades.
To make sure the stockpile is continuously supplied and updated, Garret and Fidler recommend the G-8 nations and the Asian superpowers contribute to an Advance Market Fund administered by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
The hope is the Garret-Fidler proposal will be considered at intergovernmental negotiations in Geneva aimed at setting up an international standard of sharing information about influenza viruses.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Public Library of Science & Medicine, Nov. 23, 20