The European Commission has just granted GSK, the world's second largest pharmaceutical company, approval for its vaccine Prepandrix in all 27 EU countries. The vaccine, which can be used in anticipation of a pandemic, uses the current H5N1 virus, which will possibly mutate into a form that can jump between humans, causing a global pandemic of bird flu.
GSK reports that the vaccine is flexible and would be effective even if H5N1 mutated slightly. Most other flu vaccines take four to six months to alter once a new viral strain is present.
Health officials have warned that the risk of a human influenza pandemic is probably growing as the H5N1 virus becomes more entrenched in poultry in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. There have been 382 human cases of bird flu worldwide since 2003, 241 of them fatal, according to the World Health Organisation, an agency of the United Nations.
GSK has donated 50 million doses of the vaccine to the World Health Organisation and sold versions of it to the governments of Switzerland, the USA and Finland.
