Jane23
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 Posted: 10/20/05 - 14:47 Post subject: Hungarians test human vaccine against the bird-flu virus |
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Hungarians have developed a prototype of a vaccine against the bird-flu and it proved to be effective against birds.
The prototype vaccine showed effectiveness against the Asian H5N1 strain of bird flu among poultry and it can be used to vaccinate them. The vaccine was developed from isolated cells of the H5N1 strain.
Human clinical trials are being conducted and if they prove positive this prototype will serve as a basis for the production of a real vaccine.
The results are expected today and if they are positive, the Hungarians will launch the procedure for putting on the market and mass producing the vaccine.
Their Hungarian government has said that it can produce 500,000 doses of the vaccine per week and estimates that 3.5 million of the country's 10.6 million people need to be vaccinated to prevent the predicted pandemic. The total cost of providing free vaccines is estimated to be almost a billion Hungarian forints, which is 4.0 million euros or 4.7 million dollars.
All the Hungarian citizens will be vaccinated for free and the cost of this would be borne by the commercial sales of the vaccine to other countries.
Scientists are reporting that since the mutated human virus does not currently exist, there is no vaccine for it but they are afraid that if the virus mutated, it could be easily transmitted from human to human and trigger a worldwide pandemic. |
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