HHS Orders Avian Flu Vaccine from Aventis

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department said on Tuesday it had ordered 2 million doses of avian influenza vaccine from Aventis Pasteur Inc.

The company’s Swiftwater, Pennsylvania vaccine unit will design a vaccine and then produce it to protect people against the deadly H5N1 strain of flu sweeping poultry flocks in southeast Asia.It said the $13 million contract was to protect the U.S. population against outbreaks of H5N1 flu that have killed 29 people in Thailand and Vietnam this year.”If a pandemic of avian influenza virus H5N1 occurred in humans, the new vaccine would be used to protect laboratory workers, public health personnel, and, if needed, the general public,” HHS said in a statement.”This is an important first step toward preparing our nation to respond to a pandemic influenza outbreak,” HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said.The H5N1 virus was first seen in Hong Kong in 1997 and has reappeared in southeast Asia. Whenever it appears in poultry, officials move quickly to destroy the birds to prevent its spread. To date more than 100 million birds have been culled or have died from bird flu, which experts suspect was spread across Asia by migratory birds or wild fowl.It occasionally can jump to people, usually with deadly effects.Unlike ordinary influenza, so far H5N1 cannot be spread from person to person, so it does not cause human epidemics. But flu experts say the virus, which mutates quickly, could acquire this ability at any time.Ordinary flu kills an estimated 36,000 people a year in the United States alone.(Source: Reuters, Sept 2004)