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Matthew Vella
The vaccine against the global flu pandemic due to strike in the next year will only be available in Malta five months after the pandemic hits.
Before that, Malta will still be defenceless against the killer influenza since current stocks of the anti-viral Amantadine are not strong enough to resist the flu.
A memo by primary healthcare director Dr Andrew J. Amato Gauci sent to all healthcare employees has confirmed that the present anti-viral vaccine in stock can only give 15 to 20 per cent protection.
In the memo, Amato Gauci advised healthcare employees to be vaccinated along with their immediate family members. The vaccine is being offered to the employees free of charge.
More worrying is the admission of deaths that the flu will bring along. “It is estimated that besides the significant extra morbidity there will also be a number of excess deaths resulting directly from the influenza virus,” Amato Gauci’s memo ominously warns.
In the UK, the British influenza pandemic contingency plan’s conservative estimate of deaths would create a mortality rate of 0.37 to 2.5 per cent.
But the British government has already stockpiled against the H5N1 flu, with 7.3 million doses of Tamiflu, the anti-viral that is consider as the first line of defence against the avian flu, soon to mutate into a deadly human strain.
Malta is however still defenceless against the flu pandemic as the order of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu has not been finalised yet, and current stocks of anti-virals are considered ineffective against the strain of virus.
The government is currently still in the process of buying the anti-viral drugs. According to Labour MP Michael Farrugia, if the order is issued now, Malta’s stocks of Tamiflu will arrive in late 2006 or early 2007, too late if the pandemic strikes before the year is out.
Countries all around the world have been rushing to stock the drug. The UK ordered its stock early this year when Tamiflu was shown to be the first line of defence against the bird flu after researchers at Queen Mary Hospital in London revealed the effectiveness of the medicine against the avian flu.
Malta is expected to stock enough Tamiflu for 25 per cent of the population, amounting to 100,000 people, until a vaccine will be developed a few months after the emergence of the disease. Malta will then receive the vaccine three months after it is developed.
Earlier this month, a 38-year-old Indonesian died on 12 July, the country’s first laboratory-confirmed H5N1 positive human case of avian influenza.
Tamiflu has already been used effectively in other strains of bird flu. In the Netherlands in 2003, when 1,000 people were infected with the H7N7 strain, the drug proved to be very effective.
Tamiflu is currently used in Europe, USA and Japan for type A and B influenzas. It now seems that it is also effective against the avian flu virus H5N1 strain.
Pandemics hit the planet every 27 years. The last one hit about 36 years ago.
matthew@newsworksltd.com |
