WASHINGTON – The World Health Organization has called an unprecedented summit meeting next week of flu vaccine makers and nations to expand plans for dealing with the growing threat of a flu pandemic.
Sixteen vaccine companies and health officials from the United States and other large countries already have agreed to attend the summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on Nov. 11, said Klaus Stohr, influenza chief of the United Nations’ health agency.
With increasing signs that bird flu is becoming established in Asia and several worrisome human cases that can’t be linked directly to exposure to infected poultry, it’s only a matter of time until such a virus adapts itself to spread more easily from person to person and cause a severe worldwide outbreak, he said.
The world’s total capacity for flu vaccine now is only 300 million doses, and it would take at least six months to develop a new vaccine to fight a pandemic, he said.
Pandemics occur every 20 to 30 years, when a flu strain changes so dramatically that people have little immunity from previous flu bouts.
The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19 killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. More than 500,000 died in the United States. The 1957-58 Asian flu caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States, followed by the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu, which caused about 34,000 U.S. deaths.
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