Wide Angle (A PBS television program) provides this website in support of its Tuesday program.:
"H5N1 influenza -- the powerful virus that is raging through the bird flocks of Asia -- has successfully made the leap to humans, infecting hundreds of people and killing 58 as of September 2005. It has not yet become easily transmissible from person to person, but the medical community is preparing for the possibility. Clinical trials of a human vaccine against H5N1 are continuing with promising initial results, and experiments with a number of new vaccine production methods and alternative drug treatments are underway. Similarly, the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) has shown promise against H5N1 in laboratory testing. Whether the vaccine or drug treatments will prove effective in the event of an actual pandemic, and whether the pharmaceutical industry will be able to ramp up production levels in order to provide enough doses to protect the entire human population remain open questions."
This program suggested that the danger of a pandemic in the near future is growing, due especially to the problems in Indonesia. Anthony Fauci, the head of the NIH's Center for Alergies and Infectious Disease, states that there is a vaccine now that provides levels of antibodies against a strain of H5N1 flu that should be protective, and that progress is being made in developing capacity to tailor a vaccine quickly to a strain that goes epidemic, if such an epidemic should occur. It sounded to me, however, as if the U.S. effort is directed at eventually providing protection to the U.S. population rather than stopping a global pandemic or protecting those in Asia and Africa.
