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And Chinese CDC Commence New Human Flu Vaccine Development plus World Health Organization Offers Feedback on SARS and Flu Vaccine Development Tuesday March 9, 9:52 am ET BEIJING-BUSINESS WIRE-March 9, 2004-Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Frankfurt:SVQ is pleased to announce that the Center for Disease Control of China and Sinovac are jointly working on the latest Key Science-Technology Project of the National Tenth Five-Year-Plan of China, called Research and Development of a New Human Influenza Vaccine. Sinovac has already finished the research protocol and has started working towards a vaccine. The World Health Organization WHO influenza network is likely to provide the prototype bird flu virus by the end of March and will make it available to vaccine makers around the world, according to Roy Wadia, from the WHO representative office in China. As one of the vaccine makers, Sinovac is expecting to receive the virus strain from the WHO for its New Human Influenza Vaccine Research & Development Project. Furthermore, on March 1 and 2, 2004, professionals from the WHO came to China for an International Workshop on the Development of Vaccines for SARS and New Human Influenza Vaccines. During the meeting, experts from Sinovac and more than 20 WHO professionals made presentations and discussed further collaboration about Inactivated SARS Vaccine and split Avian Flu vaccine development. The WHO officials expressed their willingness to assist with the development of an avian flu vaccine. The World Health Organization also expressed positive approval of Sinovacs plan for clinical tests of its newly developed SARS vaccine. About Avian Flu In recent weeks, United Nations UN agencies have appealed for funding from its member states to halt the rapid spread of a lethal strain of bird influenza flu, which they fear could soon evolve into a deadly human disease. Also, a UN-sponsored international emergency meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand less than two weeks ago to discuss bird flu control strategies and economic rehabilitation measures for hard-hit poultry farmers. Most disconcertingly, the outbreak of avian influenza currently sweeping the poultry flocks in a dozen or more Southeast Asian nations has so far killed a small but growing number of people, who seem to have caught it directly from birds. Incidences of Avian Flu H5N1 have been reported in many countries so far, including Thailand, Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan, Canada, and the United States of America. Scientists now believe that this could be a very bad omen, indeed. That is because bird flu has now been linked to the great influenza pandemic that killed up to 50 million people globally at the end of World War One - a far higher toll than even from the war itself. In a recent edition of the scientific magazine, Science, one of Britains foremost medical scientists, Sir John Skehel of Londons National Institute for Medical Research, reported that the 1918-19 pandemic likely resulted from avian flu that jumped the species barrier. These revelations are based on genetic samples taken from a small group of Alaskan victims whose buried bodies were preserved well enough by cold temperatures for pieces of the viruss genetic material to survive. The researchers X-ray crystallography showed that the avian viruss haemaglutinin the protein by which all flu viruses attach themselves to cells prior to infecting them allowed the virus to bind to human cells with relative ease. Now scientists are seriously concerned that a deadly trans-species flu virus is evolving that might be passed directly from person to person. Besides being highly contagious, flu viruses mutate rapidly, which means that new versions can quickly emerge, against which the bodys immune system may be powerless. Outbreaks of bird flu within the last couple of weeks in the United States and Canada in areas as far apart as Delaware, Texas and British Columbia have further heightened fears. Three United Nations agencies are raising the alarm that a strain of bird flu, known as H5N1, which has already spread as far west as Pakistan and as far east as Japan, could become pandemic in humans if not stopped quickly. World Health Organization officials also recently issued an urgent plea to the global medical community to step up efforts to halt the new bird flu, which they said could quickly evolve into an efficient and dangerous human pathogen. Many Asian nations have pledged to fight the spread of bird flu by culling infected poultry flocks in the hope of controlling its spread. So far, an estimated 100 million birds have died or have been culled, causing considerable economic hardship for many farmers. Furthermore, bird flu constitutes a threat to livelihoods, human health, as well as domestic and global trade, with serious consequences for both developing and developed countries, according to United Nations officials. The bird flu virus is believed capable of surviving for years in deep-frozen poultry. Furthermore, flu viruses can even swap genes with each other, so if someone carrying a human flu virus catches the new bird flu, the two strains could mingle inside the victims body, creating a new, highly contagious and lethal human plague. Two flu pandemics in Southeast Asia in 1957 and 1968 that caused large numbers of human deaths were caused by human and animal viruses mingling to form hybrids.
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