Countries facing an imminent flu pandemic are making progress on an agreement on how to share drugs, vaccines and the viruses needed to make them, the head of the World Health Organization said on Thursday. Director-General Margaret Chan told officials at the WHO's annual meeting that collaboration seen between governments, drug makers and vaccine makers since the emergence of the H1N1 strain gave hope for conciliation between rich and poor countries. “The events of the past four weeks, with H1N1, the imminent pandemic, has given all of us an opportunity,” Chan said. “We have seen something that we have never seen before: the total commitment of countries affected (by flu) to transparency, to timely reporting, sharing of information, sequences, viruses, diagnostic kits, laboratory equipment, and the list goes on.” The biggest sticking point in those talks has been how and when biological samples of viruses would be shared with the world's pharmaceutical companies who need them to make vaccines, an issue known as “material transfer.” Indonesia and other developing countries have been pushing for guarantees that vaccines developed from such virus samples they provide will be made available at an affordable price, and in sufficient quantities to protect poorer nations. Chan, who fought bird flu and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as Hong Kong's health director, said it appeared to be time to push the 2-1/2-year-old talks toward a conclusion. She won broad support on Thursday for a proposal for her to “facilitate a process to finalize the remaining elements including the standard material transfer agreement” and then present a deal to the WHO's executive board in January 2010. “We think this is an excellent way to move forward,” the US delegate to the Geneva meeting said. Brazil, Thailand, India, Canada, Australia, and others also voiced agreement, but Chan herself warned that success would not be easy. The H1N1 strain is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, bird and human viruses that spreads easily between people. It has killed 85 people and infected more than 11,000 so far. Antiviral drugs including Roche's Tamiflu have been shown to work against the new virus, and vaccine makers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis and Baxter are trying to boost their capacity to produce an injection to protect people against it. Older people more immune to H1N1 New test results show what scientists have suspected – people in their 60's and older have signs of greater immunity to the new swine flu virus. Scientists think it's because older people have been exposed to other viruses in the past that are more similar to swine flu than more recent seasonal flus. But the results come from complicated lab work and calculations, and it's not yet clear how safe older people actually are from the new infection, federal officials said. However, it could have implications for how well different people do when exposed to the swine flu virus. Also, if the government pushes swine flu shots later this year, it might mean only one dose is necessary for senior citizens. This would help explain why the new flu seems to be hitting younger people harder than older folks. Usually, the vast majority of flu-related hospitalizations are elderly people. But with the new virus, about 40 percent of those hospitalized have been in the 18 to 50 age group. For all cases – not just those hospitalized – more than 60 percent have been in people younger than 25.
