The U.S. Senate, increasingly concerned with the possibility of a deadly influenza pandemic, on Thursday approved nearly $8 billion to help the government stockpile vaccines and other drugs to fight the disease, Reuters reported. Avian flu, which is widespread among flocks of poultry in Asia and has spread west into Eastern Europe, has only infected about 120 people, killing half of them. The deaths were in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. But scientists fear that if the virus mutates in a way that humans could easily pass it among themselves, millions of people would succumb. The measure was attached to a fiscal 2006 funding bill for the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies that the Senate was expected to approve by week's end. It is not yet clear whether the House of Representatives would provide its needed concurrence. The measure would provide $3.3 billion to stockpile avian flu vaccines, or about 120 million doses, as they are created, and about $3 billion for anti-viral drugs to serve half of the American population of nearly 300 million.
