( China is likely to be using sub-standar...)Bad vaccines may trigger China bird flu,Health

China is likely to be using sub-standard poultry vaccine, which would explain recent outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry, experts feel // .

The fear among experts is that the virus could mutate from a disease that largely affects birds to one that can pass easily between people, leading to a human pandemic.

Since late 2003, there have been 141 confirmed human cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, all of them in Asia, including six in China. Two people have died from bird flu in China, out of 73 known fatalities in Asia.

According to experts, the problem of substandard vaccines was not exclusive to China.

“If you use a good vaccine you can prevent the transmission within poultry and to humans. But if they have been using vaccines now (in China) for several years, how can one account of so much bird flu?” they ask.

Thirty-one counties in China have reported outbreaks of the H5N1 in poultry this year; only one county remains under isolation with no new outbreaks for three weeks, according to Chinese state media.

“The bad vaccine may stop the disease symptoms in the bird, but the bird carries the virus, maintaining it and changing it. This is most likely what is going on in China. Either there is not enough vaccine, or substandard vaccine is being used. Most probably both,” experts say.

While appreciating China’s ambitious plan to vaccinate all its chickens, they underline the need for agricultural vaccines to be standardized, as there are sub-standard vaccines of bird-flu all over the world.

Experts warn against underestimating the virus, which has exhibited some of the characteristics of the Spanish flu virus of 1918-1919, which killed an estimated 50 million people.

There are about 10 critical amino acids in the 1918 virus that seemed to be necessary for it to be pathogenic. Many of those changes have been seen in the H5N1, but not all together.
'"/>




Page: 1 2
Related medicine news :

1. The importance of vaccines
2. Two New Human Papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines to prevent cervical cancer
3. The Indian Government has given the nod to conduct Human volunteer trials inorder to develop preventive AIDS vaccines
4. And now it is vaccines for heart disease
5. Religious groups overcome objections to cervical cancer vaccines
6. Prevention of lethal diseases by vaccines
7. Immunity carefully enhanced in elders by high-dose flu vaccines
8. Fresh bird flu vaccines made in China
9. Childhood vaccines may lose their power of long-term protection with exposure to chemical pollutants.
10. Bihar family to spend Rs.43,000 on rabies vaccines
11. Skin-patch vaccines may replace injectable ones in future…