Develop vaccines for all animal influenza strains: WHO incoming chief scientist

Countries from the United States and Britain to France and Japan have suffered record losses of poultry in outbreaks of avian flu over the past year.

The WHO said earlier this month that the recent spread of H5N1 in mammals – commonly known as bird flu – needed to be monitored, but the risk to humans remained low.

Incoming WHO chief scientist Jeremy Farrar said he’d like to see the pharmaceutical industry conduct at least some clinical trials for all influenza strains, such as asking the world to start from scratch to start manufacturing global There shouldn’t be a need.

“My concern is that we are watching in slow motion something that may never happen,” he told a media briefing. “But if that were the case, would we look back at what we’re doing now and say, why didn’t we do more?”

Farrar is a clinical scientist who most recently served as director of the Wellcome Trust. He was appointed as the WHO’s chief scientist in December, and will formally join the agency later this year.