Une info que j’ai trouvée sur le net mais dont je n’ai pas eu d’écho dans les médias hexagonaux. Si quelqu’un à plus d’infos....
A large consignment of seasonal flu vaccine, which was due to be
circulated to 18 European countries, has been infected with deadly live
avian flu virus. Had the contamination not been detected, the vaccines
may have started an avian flu pandemic, killing hundreds of thousands
of people.
The World Health Organization is carrying out investigations at the
Austrian research facility of Baxter International, the pharmaceutical
company, where the contamination happened. Baxter has confirmed that
the consignment contained live H5N1 virus, which causes avian flu.
A researcher in the Czech Republic discovered the lethal
contamination when laboratory ferrets that he had injected with the
H3N2 flu vaccine suddenly died. The H5N1 virus becomes lethal as an
injection only when it is mixed with H3N2, a process known as
reassortment.
The WHO investigation team says it doesn’t have evidence to suggest
that Baxter had deliberately reassorted the two viruses, but “what
remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in
the Baxter facility,” a WHO official said.
Despite dire warnings from health officials, no avian flu pandemic
has occurred as human-to-human infection hasn’t happened. So far,
several hundred people have died after catching the virus from poultry,
although governments have warned that millions would die if people
could infect each other.
Baxter is currently working on a new type of avian flu vaccine, called Celvapan, which is based on cell culture technology.
The technology, which is being developed at Baxter’s research
facility in the Czech Republic, by-passes the conventional process
where a virus is incubated in chicken eggs. Instead, Baxter is working
with the ‘native’ virus that does not need to be modified.
Last year the vaccine passed the first two phases of safety trials,
and Baxter announced that “Celvapan combines innovative science and
breakthrough production technology with the aim of protecting people
against an H5N1 pandemic flu infection.”
(Sources : Toronto Sun, February 27, 2009 ; New England Journal of Medicine, 2008 ; 358 : 2573-84).