Glaxo's First Human Vaccine For Bird Flu Gets Approval In Europe

London, England (AHN) - Britain's leading drug manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has won European Union approval for the first human bird flu vaccine that will protect people against the H5N1 strain of the deadly disease.

Glaxo, which has already spent $2 billion developing the vaccine, has orders from Switzerland and the United States for the vaccine.

The world's second-biggest drug group said the European commission had approved its vaccine, called Prepandrix, in all 27 EU member states. The vaccine, which uses the current H5N1 influenza virus, has the advantage of allowing governments to begin to inoculate their population before a pandemic.

GSK's bird flu vaccine uses small doses of existing H5N1 strains from Vietnam and Indonesia to immune the human body to recognise the virus and help it fight off mutations.

Scientists fear that the influenza virus could jump from birds to humans in a form that is highly infectious. It could trigger a flu pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.

However, if the flu pandemic mutates too far away from the current H5N1 virus into a totally new form, then GSK's vaccine will not be effective and a new vaccine will have to be made.