Faced with the first World Health Organization (WHO) declared pandemic in four decades, health officials arou world are rushing to order huge stock-piles of the H1N1 (Swine) Fl vaccine in what is shaping up as a multibillion-dollar windfall for the world’s biggest manufacturers.
Novartis is one of five big manufacturers preparing swine flu vaccines for the U.S. market, a CDC official says. Dr. Pascale Wortley, the CDC’s pandemic-vaccine coordinator, says that by October the U.S. expects to have between 40 million and 160 million doses of vaccine ready for use. That could mean that this fall, U.S. school children may be expected to get a seasonal flu shot as well as a double dose of swine flu vaccine.
As President Obama waits for Congress to deliver a heathcare reform bill, pharmaceutical companies are spending millions on lobbyists to thwart any measure that might make drug prices cheaper or even allow the government to negotiate them, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Companies spent 41 percent more this year on lobbying than last, USA Today reported. And companies have laden Congress members with campaign donations, funds to their non-profits, and paid seats on their boards. Taken together, it looks like Congress is bought and paid for. Thus millions of Americans may be entertaining a false hope that Washington will deliver a plan that will lift U.S. healthcare out of its Third World status and into something approaching modernity, like Europe or Canada.
An additional $884 million in funding has been allocated to buy more ingredients an antigen and an adjuvant for swine flu vaccines. This is in addition to the $1 billion The Department of Health and Human Services committed to fighting the Swine Flu in May.
The swine flu case of 1976 forever reduced confidence in public health pronouncements from the government and helped foster cynicism about federal policy makers that continues to this day.
When Audrey Hepburn was asked to share her ‘beauty tips’ she wrote this wonderful poem. Years later, it was read at her funeral.
San Diego-based Vical, a firm who is developing an H1N1 vaccine under an agreement with the U.S. Navy saw company shares climb 45 cents, to $2.65 on positive clinical trial news this week. Vical researches and develops biopharmaceutical products based on our patented DNA delivery technologies for the prevention and treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases. Vical’s stock shot up 20 percent on the news that their swine flu jab sailed through an animal study with positive results. Vical’s H1N1 vaccine is now ready for a human study — marching into the clinic in record time.
Around the world, vaccine manufactures are rushing new swine flu vaccines into clinic trials and booking pre-orders from worried Public Health officials, while epidemiologists are still puzzling out how the new flu works and why many young people without any health complications are often hit the hardest by H1N1.
GlaxoSmithKline’s cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix has won a green light from the World Health Organisation (WHO) for use in developing countries, although how the shot will be paid for has yet to be resolved. WHO “prequalification” is necessary for UN agencies and the non-profit GAVI Alliance to purchase the vaccine, and Glaxo said it hoped the move would help speed access to Cervarix globally.
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