News & Perspective

Editor's note: This is the second in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The series puts promising advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing large amounts of an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

Maryn McKennaContributing Writer

(CIDRAP News) – This in-depth article investigates the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Its seven parts put advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

(CIDRAP News) – After delaying action for weeks as the novel H1N1 influenza virus took hold in far-flung parts of the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) today declared a full-fledged pandemic, formally recognizing that the virus is becoming a global contagion.

(CIDRAP News) – Leading public health officials and experts have sharply rejected charges from some European officials that pharmaceutical companies used exaggerated claims about the H1N1 pandemic threat to scare governments into buying unnecessary stockpiles of vaccines.