Gearing Up to Battle Bird Flu
Bird flu continues to spread around the world and is as virulent as ever. Last week, test results confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain had claimed the lives of a 35-year-old man in Vietnam and a 19-year-old Indonesian woman, bringing the worldwide death toll to 64. The Chinese government responded quickly to a spate of new outbreaks in poultry by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds, quarantining nearby residents, and closing all of Beijing's 168 live poultry markets.
Nearly every country is testing wild and domestic birds for the virus, which has now spread beyond southeast Asia and has been reported in Turkey, Croatia, and, last week, Italy and Kuwait. Public-health experts fear that H5N1 will soon show up in Africa, because many of Europe's and Asia's migratory birds, natural carriers of the virus, go to that continent in the winter.
Countries around the world are mobilizing to fight the virus. President Bush unveiled his $7.1 billion plan to fight pandemic flu earlier this month. World health leaders put together their own battle plan last week at a global summit at the World Health Organization in Geneva, with a $1.5 billion price tag over three years to try to reduce the current level of infection in birds and the threat to humans. Part of that money would go toward vaccine research as well as for loans to poor countries to buy antiviral drugs. More money would be needed if the virus spreads significantly, especially to humans.
Unknown demand. Experts have long worried that there won't be enough of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, which may help stave off H5N1 in humans and is the star of most pandemic flu preparedness plans. Roche, Tamiflu's sole manufacturer, tried to allay those fears last week by announcing it was ramping up production to make 300 million doses a year by 2007, a 10-fold increase over 2003 and more than enough to fill current orders. Of course, that demand could change drastically. William Burns, head of Roche's pharmaceutical division, says that measuring the true level of demand "is the biggest open-ended question that we have."
Roche officials also say the firm plans to sell the raw material for making Tamiflu to Vietnam, so that country can make its own, less costly version. But others might take matters into their own hands. Last week Chinese scientists said they would try to develop a generic version of Tamiflu. Several foreign governments as well as an Indian pharmaceutical company have also said they might produce a generic version. As for Roche, it says it wants to work with firms to ensure that patent laws do not get in the way if there is a pandemic.
This story appears in the November 21, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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