HK: Lawmakers urged to buy bird flu vaccines

Paul Mozur and Beatrice Siu

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The recent spate of mainland bird flu cases has spurred a debate between legislators and the health minister about vaccine purchases.


Civic Party lawmaker Audrey Eu Yuet- mee asked at the Legislative Council yesterday whether the government would consider purchasing vaccines for citizens.

Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok said the decision depends on whether the H5 virus vaccine is still efficient under the current avian flu development.

"The decision must be made according to the situation, and see which type of vaccine is the most efficient. The government has to be more prudent on the decision," he said, adding the government will consider buying the vaccine once it is proven to be efficient.

But Eu said the public deserves to be better informed about why the government has not gone about purchasing the vaccine, given that other places such as Singapore, Japan and Taiwan have.

"We understand it would be wasteful to purchase vaccines that don't work, but we want to know how effective these vaccines are, and why the government hasn't been considering this," she said. Eu compared the current situation to the SARS outbreak in 2003.

"The government says these are isolated cases in the mainland," she said. "But with SARS, we saw cases of people buying drugs to help prevent it in the mainland, and the public didn't know what was happening, and the government didn't know, and quickly we had SARS here."

Eu added what seemed like isolated cases in the mainland may not be, and called for the government to take all steps necessary to prevent any outbreak of bird flu.

Scientific Committee on Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases member Lo Wing-lok said the committee was evaluating the effectiveness of various vaccines, but pointed out: "There is no way to predict whether the next pandemic will be be avian flu, H5N1, or another influenza such as H2 or H9."

He said the committee was putting together a set of recommendations for Legco that would be available in the coming months.

Catering sector lawmaker Tommy Cheung Yu-yan also asked whether it was too late for the government to investigate chicken farms after the carcasses of infected poultry washed up on Lantau Island.

Chow said the investigation was carried out at the end of January on mainland and Hong Kong farms, as soon as the dead birds were found.
The government also said it would keep close contact with mainland authorities.
hat-tip Muscade