Dr. David Fedson, a retired professor of medicine from the University of Virginia, told the conference that the vaccine for the H5N1 strain of the virus -- the strain deadly to humans -- had proven extremely difficult to grow. He also said what researchers had grown was not effective at stimulating an immune response in the body that would successfully defend vaccine recipients against bird flu.
Dr. Fedson also cited production difficulties: "We could immunize globally, with six months of production, about 100 million people. From a public health point of view this is catastrophic." The world population is currently 6.5 billion.
Professor Albert Osterhaus, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, called for world governments to step up and foot the bill for proper clinical trials and mass production of bird flu vaccines.
"Basically, if we don't invest now in suitable clinical trials, there will be a shortage of vaccine -- if we have a vaccine at all," Osterhaus said.
Dr. Fedson said government denial of the magnitude of the bird flu threat was the root of the funding problems for producing a vaccine. He says governments are "hedging their futures" by using research funding on programs less important than the bird flu vaccine.
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