Russian Scientists Test Vaccine Against Bird Flu

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

St Petersburg, 22 October: A vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus has been developed in St Petersburg. It is being tested on volunteers, then it will be passed over to the consortium of state companies under the Russian Health Ministry. ITAR-TASS learnt this today from the head of the World Health Organization national influenza centre in St Petersburg, Academician Oleg Kiselev.

He said there were plans to produce a trial industrial batch of vaccine at a chemical and pharmaceutical factory in Ufa – tentatively, until the end of 2005. Among the risk groups, whose representatives will be vaccinated as a priority, the head of the centre named veterinary inspectors and employees of poultry farms, customs inspectors in the Far East, and the employees of veterinary stations, laboratories and veterinary monitoring services.

Kiselev also said the European Union had included the St Petersburg Influenza Research Institute into the international project for producing vaccines against highly pathogenic bird flu viruses. The project costs 9m euros, he said.

Six Western European medical centres and one Russian are involved in the project to produce a highly effective antidote.