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French, Chinese Firms to Conduct Bird Flu Vaccine Trials in Thailand

Posted on: Friday, 28 October 2005, 09:01 CDT

Excerpt from report in English by Thai newspaper Bangkok Post website on 28 October

French and Chinese pharmaceutical giants plan to conduct H5N1 vaccination trials on health care workers, poultry farmers and kids in Thailand, considered to be at-risk groups for bird flu infection, the Public Health Ministry's Medical Sciences Department revealed yesterday. France's Sanofi Pasteur and China's Sinovac Biotech were interested in jointly conducting the bird flu vaccine experiments on humans with the ministry.

The companies also disclosed plans to establish avian influenza production factories here, said chief of Medical Sciences Paijit Warachit.

"We have been talking with both countries. We might work with the French company (on vaccination trial projects) if we are confident about the safety of the Thai volunteers," he said.

The ministry has asked Japan to produce 30,000-100,000 doses of an avian influenza virus for humans and is expected to start Thailand's first bird flu vaccination trial in the middle of next year.

However, Public Health Minister Suchai Charoenrattanakul said close surveillance and rapid diagnosis were still the most effective ways to control the virus.

He ordered local public health volunteers and the ministry's rapid response teams to step up their monitoring operations and to educate the public about bird flu prevention.

Thailand has confirmed 19 cases of bird flu with 13 fatalities since the first human case was confirmed on 23 January. All of the victims lived in remote areas and had close contact with sick poultry.

There are 800,000 local public health volunteers working in villages nationwide and 1,300 surveillance and rapid response teams checking on suspected cases.

The Public Health Ministry has also prepared to stockpile 300 tablets of the anti-viral drug Oseltamivir, the generic name for Tamiflu, 50 rapid test kits and 500 masks at provincial hospitals.

The ministry yesterday put 1,228 people with flu-like symptoms under observation. There are no suspected bird flu cases on the list at the moment.

Nirundorn Aungtragoolsuk, director of the Livestock Department's Disease Control Bureau, said about 300,000 poultry, including 280,000 quail, 27,000 broilers and about 1,000 native chickens, have been culled since the "third wave" of bird flu outbreak started on 5 July. [passage omitted]

In Bangkok, Governor Apirak Kosayodhin said the capital is free of H5N1.

The governor visited several chicken and fighting rooster farms but not the chicken farm on Soi Thamrongwinitchai where 20 chickens were found dead.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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