The world's governments should set aside 5 percent of their spending on influenza vaccines to help get ready for the next big flu epidemic, a World Health Organization expert proposed on Monday. The money could be used to research quicker ways to make influenza vaccine -- notably one that would work against avian flu, which threatens to kill hundreds of millions around the world if it mutates enough, said Dr. Klaus Stohr, WHO's top influenza expert. More research is also needed on who may have some natural immunity to avian flu and if so whether study of such people can help fight the virus, experts told a meeting sponsored by the Institute of Medicine in Washington. The H5N1 flu has killed 49 people in Asia since late 2003 and killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of chickens and other birds. Every year so-called seasonal flu kills 500,000 people and it occasionally evolves into a form that kills many, many more -- up to 40 million in 1918, for example. Yet the world relies on old-fashioned methods for making influenza vaccines that require the use of specially grown chicken eggs and months of culturing. Each year the vaccine cocktail must be changed to follow the mutations of the flu virus and each year people must be re-vaccinated. This same painstaking method is being used to make a new vaccine against H5N1 flu. WHO estimates it would take a year to produce enough vaccine to protect substantial numbers of people against avian flu, by which time it could have swept the globe, Stohr said. What is needed, several experts told the conference, is a vaccine that works against multiple strains, can be produced quickly in lab dishes instead of in eggs and that produces immunity for years.
