A safe and effective vaccine against bird flu could be available in a year, and if the world is facing a pandemic, the regulatory process could be speeded up to make it available even faster, AP quoted a World Health Organization official as saying Wednesday. Marie-Paule Kieny, director of WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research, made the estimate at the end of a four-day meeting of about 200 vaccine researchers, scientists and public health experts from around the world. The experts met at the seventh WHO Global Vaccine Research Forum to review developments against such diseases as malaria, dengue fever, AIDS, bird flu and human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer. Kieny said the pace of development of a vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus depends on whether the world faces a pandemic with the potential to kill millions. In the absence of a pandemic, «We can expect that a year from now, there will be vaccines against H5N1 influenza strains which could be licensed for human use,» she said. If a pandemic began sooner than that, the procedure for certifying a vaccine for full production would move faster, she said.
