Vietnam will start producing vaccines to be used among people against bird flu virus strain H5N1 on Thursday.

The country's National Institute of Hygiene, which has researched into the vaccines since 2004, has proposed the Health Ministry use them on trial basis in early 2006, local newspaper Young People on Wednesday quoted the institute in Hanoi as saying.

The institute has made full reports to the ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) about relevant professional aspects of the production of H5N1 vaccines, the first line of defense for reducing the excess morbidity and mortality which invariably accompany pandemics as stated by the organization.

"Around 10 countries have domestic vaccine producers, and several of these are presently working on the development of a pandemic vaccine. Some of these development projects have reached the stage of clinical trials... One company has indicated that it will be presenting the results of its clinical trials to WHO by early December 2005. However, if a pandemic were to begin within the next few months, no company would be ready to move immediately into commercial production," the organization said in an early November statement.

In addition to producing H5N1 vaccines for humans, Vietnam is actively ensuring reserves of Tamiflu, the medicine used for treatment of bird flu patients, and facilitating vaccination among fowls nationwide.

On Tuesday, representatives of Roche, Swiss producer of Tamiflu, agreed to allow several qualified Vietnamese pharmaceutical companies to produce the medicine in Vietnam, according to the ministry's Drug Management Department. The production is expected to start in the first quarter of next year.

Roche also agreed to supply Vietnam with 25 million Tamiflu capsules in case of pandemics. The first 2 million capsules will be delivered from now to the year's end, the next 8 million in the first half of 2006, and the rest in the second half.

Up to 92 Vietnamese people have been infected with bird flu since the disease started to break out in the country in late 2003. Of them, 42 have died, the ministry said, noting the latest case reported on Oct. 29 was a 35-year-old man from Hanoi.

Now, Vietnam is importing more bird flu vaccines for poultry from China and the Netherlands. It has so far vaccinated over 88.6 million fowls against bird flu viruses, including H5N1, in 53 cities and provinces nationwide, according to the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Previous outbreaks starting in December 2003 killed and led to the forced culling of some 46.6 million fowls in Vietnam, causing losses of 3.5 trillion Vietnamese dong (221.5 million US dollars), the agriculture ministry said.

Source: Xinhua