This vaccine could be given to people who were in the front line...

A new vaccine that may be administered to people to protect them from the H5N1 bird flu virus has been approved for use by the medical authorities in America and large quantities of the vaccine have already been handed over to the medical authorities over there. You might think that this is the vaccine that we have all been waiting for and that the world needs not to worry about the bird flu virus anymore, but this is not the case at all.

The vaccine that is made by the French drug company Sanofi Aventis is not a dead cert bird flu vaccine but only a medicine that can improve significantly the chances of not catching the bird flu virus if you were exposed to it. The FDA said that this vaccine could be given to people who were in the front line of a H5N1 influenza virus pandemic and also said that this vaccine is not to be made available for the larger public as it did not have high enough effectiveness rates to justify public sale.

The clinical testing for this new vaccine involved just over 100 volunteers who were given two 90mg doses of this new bird flu vaccine 28 days apart and also 300 volunteers who were given smaller doses below 90mg. The results clearly showed that just fewer than 50 percent of the people getting the two 90 mg doses ended up with H5N1 antibodies to protect them from the influenza virus but just a over 50% did not get the required level of antibodies protection. Nevertheless the vaccine could be used as defence to limit the spread of a bird flu virus pandemic.

Scientists all over the world are still working to find a vaccine that would completely eradicate the dangers of the H5N1 bird flu virus but in view of the fact that the virus could mutate into new forms it is unlikely that a total solution will be found in the near future.