Indigenous swine flu vaccine likely by September
POSTED August 5, 2009 - 17:32 | POSTED BY Jyoti Pal
Last edited by Priya Markanda on August 5, 2009 - 18:37
The country would thus be equipped to handle the second wave of the pandemic that is likely to strike sometime in November.
No deadline given to manufacturers
Out of the three India companies, Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech and Panacea, working towards the production of the vaccine, two have assured the health ministry that the vaccine would be complete by end of September this year.
The companies were not given any deadline for developing vaccine by the health officials. It has been the urgency of the situation and their commitment that has driven them to develop a vaccine in such good time.
Director General of health services (DGHS) Dr. R K Srivastava confirmed, “Two of these companies have told us that they will be able to provide the vaccine by September while the third one hasn’t given any time frame yet.”
“Once we are near to having the vaccine, we will decide who will get it first, how many vaccine doses we will require and what the regimens will be,” he added.
Onus on manufacturers
Work on the vaccine had started way back in May, a month after the first swine flu case was reported in Mexico.
The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology in Pune had isolated the lethal Influenza A (H1N1) virus.
Atlanta based Centre for Disease Control (CDC) also developed a seed stock, a strain of the virus, and sent it to three manufacturers for manufacture of the vaccine. This strain is considered as the first step towards growing a vaccine.
Dr V M Katoch, ICMR director general, noted that there would be no time to check the side-effects and the long term effects of such a vaccine. Therefore the onus of ensuring that the vaccine is safe and effective was on the manufacturers.
“They (the manufacturers) will look at whether the human immune system is producing antibodies against the virus or not. We should therefore have a vaccine in the next three months.”
So far, 558 persons have tested positive for the swine flu virus in the country. Out of these 470 patients have already been treated and discharged.
The lethal virus proved fatal for a teenaged girl in the city of Pune. There has been no other death reported in the country due to the virus.
