Published 29 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3988
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3988

News

UN seeks $1.5bn and donations of vaccines to help poor nations fight swine flu

John Zarocostas

1 Geneva

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

United Nations health officials have called for rich nations to pledge more money and donate vaccines against H1N1 flu to help developing countries fight the pandemic. It is expected that the impact will be more severe in these countries than in richer countries.

The call comes as revised estimates from the World Health Organization indicate that drug companies would produce only about three billion doses of vaccines a year, down from the 4.9 billion doses predicted in May.

"These countries have the weakest capacity and resources to withstand an escalation of H1N1 and the most vulnerable populations," concludes a United Nations task force report.

It adds, "Countries where health services are overburdened by diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, will have great difficulty managing the surge of cases seen when pandemic influenza spreads."

The report says that a contingency fund of $1.48bn (£0.9bn; {euro}1bn) is needed for 85 resource . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ