Cancun, Mexico - China wants to be 'self-sufficient' in the
production of vaccines against the new A(H1N1) influenza virus, and
plans to have a vaccine available by September, Chinese Health
Minister Zhu Chen said Friday.
'We are producing the vaccines, we have 10 pharmaceutical
industries involved in the vaccine's production and manufacturing. I
think maybe in September (they will be) ready to be further
evaluated,' Zhu told the German Press Agency dpa on the sidelines of
the global summit on the new flu in Cancun, Mexico.
The Chinese minister said that 'some of the public companies' in
China are in the process of the initial manufacturing of a vaccine. A
preliminary version is likely to be ready by the end of this month,
he noted.
'By September I think we will have the first results of the safety
evaluation,' Zhu said.
By then, China hopes to be able to produce at least 13 million
doses, equivalent to 1 per cent of its population of 1.3 billion
people.
'That's not enough, for sure. Anyway the vaccines could not be
enough for everybody in the world. So we need to identify the high
risk population,' Zhu explained.
An expert of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) said
Friday in Cancun that developed countries have already reserved most
of the vaccines, even though production has not yet started.
'Developed countries have bought 60 to 80 per cent of (expected)
production,' Cuauhtemoc Ruiz, head of PAHO's immunization programme,
said in Cancun.
Ruiz estimated that developing countries will 'at best' have
access to around 10-20 per cent of total global production.
Zhu agreed with this evaluation.
'To my knowledge all the products (vaccines) produced by the
multinationals have been already ordered,' he said. 'But I think that
China should be self-sufficient.'
'We are expanding the capacity of our vaccine manufacturing and I
think by the end of this year we may produce the amount necessary for
5 percent of the population, even more,' Zhu said.
The Chinese official said his presence in Mexico - along with
representatives of 43 countries and World Health Organization (WHO)
Director-General Margaret Chan - showed that flu-related spats
between Beijing and Mexico City have been put aside.
When the virus was first identified with Mexico as the epicentre
in April, China put scores of Mexicans in quarantine, even if they
did not have symptoms of the flu. Flight connections between China
and the North American country were cancelled.
Zhu explained that the mortality rate associated with the A(H1N1)
flu virus initially seemed to be high, around 5 per cent. A broader
perspective allowed China to ease restrictions.
'We solved all the problems with our Mexican colleagues,' he
noted.
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