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 News from Around the Americas | October 2005 
Mexico: Poorer Nations Need Flu Vaccine Capability
 David Ljunggren - Reuters
| | A parrot cleans its feathers in a National Zoo of Managua, Nicaragua. Central American governments worry that bird flu could more likely be brought by migratory birds entering the region. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) |
The best way to ensure sufficient vaccines in the event of a global flu pandemic is to transfer the necessary technology now to nations such as Mexico, India, China and Brazil, said Mexico's health minister.
Julio Frenk said only nine industrialized countries had the ability to produce the vaccine needed to fight a pandemic.
"The pandemic has not occurred and that's our biggest advantage...there's no time to waste. And it's an extraordinary situation which requires extraordinary responses," Frenk told Reuters and Reuters Television in an interview late on Monday.
"The idea now that we could actually move and expand the network of countries producing vaccines, I think, is an idea whose time has come because it's clear that with current capabilities, we would never even remotely meet the needs of the entire world," he said.
Frenk was speaking on the sidelines of an international conference to discuss what the world needs to do to fight a human influenza pandemic.
A lethal strain of wild bird flu has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia, triggering fears it might mutate and start spreading from person to person, killing millions.
Frenk said that if the capacity to make vaccines was transferred to Mexico, the government would need to invest $50 million to upgrade existing facilities.
"We're not advocating violating patents or anything like that," he said, addressing fears that technology transfers could lead to an erosion of intellectual property rights or the violation of patents.
Frenk said there were important moral and practical reasons for disseminating vaccine technology more widely.
"Probably the only worse thing (than) the pandemic itself would be a situation where only the rich countries of the world had access to drugs and vaccines and the rest of the world just watched and suffered," Frenk said. "No one wants that."
Even if developed countries had the ability to vaccinate enough citizens during a pandemic, this would be of no use in a highly integrated world, he said.
Indeed, the best national plan "will fail if a large part of the world is unprotected," said Frenk.
"So no country is a fortress and if we do have that additional layer of capacity in countries with good scientific and technical skills in the productions of vaccines and medicines, let's use it to its full extent," he said. |
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