Jan 29, 2010
THE Health Ministry will be buying about one million doses of H5N1 avian flu pre-pandemic vaccine soon.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed yesterday that his ministry is evaluating a tender to stock up on the vaccine.
'It's one of those insurance policies that we have to buy and we will stock it up and hope never to have to use it,' he said.
'The virus is still out there and it may flare up, so we cannot afford not to do anything.'
The World Health Organisation's director-general, Dr Margaret Chan, had recently said that countries remain ill-prepared for mass outbreaks of the bird flu virus, which affects humans in contact with sick birds.
It has a mortality rate of more than 60 per cent, leading to fears that a pandemic with this strain of virus could prove lethal. Scientists also fear that it could achieve efficient human-to-human transmission at any time and trigger a pandemic.
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