Palscience

Since the first time bird flu occurred in 1997 in Hong Kong, over 250 people from Asian, Europe and Africa have died and its one third of the total people who got infected. It is believe that people who got infected had a close contact with poultry, and scientist worry bird flu to mutate to form easier disease to spread easily among people who have no natural immunity.

The current medicine used to treat bird flu is made of millions of chicken eggs, and it takes a long time to produce it. But recently a new vaccine called “Baxter” was produced by Baxter International Inc. According to them, the medicine is made of lab-grown cells instead of chicken eggs and it successfully blocked the highly lethal virus “Bird Flu”. The new discovery could cut the production time in half as little as only 12 weeks, and reduce the cost of the production.

Results of mid-stage testing of the Baxter vaccine, Celvapan, showed two shots produced an immune response considered strong enough to protect 76 percent of healthy adults from both the H5N1 Vietnam strain it targets and the related Hong Kong strain; it appeared to protect 45 percent from a third, Indonesian strain. Physorg.com

Statistics shows that Vietnam and Indonesia are the most effected by the disease, The U.S has stockpiled 23 million doses of egg-based human bird flu vaccine made by three companies.

“I think it is a big leap forward,” said Dr. Wilbur Chen, a vaccine researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine not involved in the study.

Baxter had many positive reactions form all over the world by disease and vaccine specialist, for example, Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist, said researchers need to keep working to make a better vaccine but Baxter’s got “pretty darn good results” at low doses.

“I’m excited about this, but we have not yet reached the finish line,” he said.

I hope that the third world countries will be able to afford such vaccine, and clear that disease for ever.

Sources:

Get the facts on bird flu virus causes and treatment in humans

Bird flu — Comprehensive overview covers symptoms, causes and prevention

What is bird flu? And should you be worried?

Facts about previous flu pandemics, and key facts about bird flu and the avian influenza A (H5N1) virus