click photo to enlarge
ROME -- U.N. officials said Tuesday they are exploring ways to step up the production of a vaccine in case bird flu mutates and sparks a human flu pandemic.
David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator for avian and human influenza, said it will take six months to build up a stockpile of vaccines, but health authorities are worried that amount of time might be too long if a pandemic flu strain emerges.
"We will need to have vaccines much more quickly than six months," Nabarro said, adding that the World Health Organization and governments are exploring how to "pull together vaccine manufacturers" to see if it can be done more quickly.
"The World Health Organization as we speak is looking at options to get a scaling up of vaccine production capacity," Nabarro said.
For the virus to become a global threat, it would have to mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person. Efforts to create an effective vaccine are limited until that strain emerges.
However, some countries are preparing a vaccine based on the most common bird flu virus circulating, partly to help them speed up the research so that a human vaccine can be produced more quickly and in larger quantities once the strain emerges.
Last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said "no one in the world is ready" for a catastrophic outbreak of bird flu and President Bush summoned vaccine manufacturers to the White House to discuss the situation.
Speaking Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show, Bush expressed confidence that the government would develop a plan "to handle a major outbreak" if bird flu spreads to the United States.