Baxter’s Vaccine Research Sent Bird Flu Across European Labs
By Michelle Fay Cortez and Jason Gale
Last Updated: February 24, 2009 09:28 EST
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aiqmSoL6sVbk&refer=industries
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Researchers from Baxter International Inc. in Austria unintentionally sent samples contaminated with the bird flu virus to laboratories in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease.
The contamination was discovered after ferrets were injected with the vaccine, according to BioTest s.r.o, a biotechnology company based in Konarovice that was working with the immunization in the Czech Republic.
The vaccine came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a spokeswoman for the ministry, said in a telephone interview today. The vaccine was prepared for use in laboratories, and none of the workers exposed have fallen ill.
“This was infected with a bird flu virus,” Rosenberger said. “There were some people from the company who handled it. They went to the hospital and were tested and were cleared. There have been no infections.”
The Austrian health ministry reported the incident to the European Union and plans to conduct its own audit, she said. The vaccine has been destroyed, according to Rosenberger.
Chris Bona and Laura Grossmann, Baxter spokespeople, didn’t immediately return phone calls placed before business hours. Roland Bettschart, who handles media enquiries for Baxter in Vienna, said a “laboratory glitch” occurred and the company would send a formal statement soon.
The World Health Organization “is aware of the situation and is consulting with the ministers of health of the countries involved to ensure that all public risks arising from this event have been identified and managed appropriately,” said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman in Geneva.
The European Medicines Agency has no immediate comment, said Monika Benstetter, an agency spokeswoman.
Flu Pandemic
The H5N1 strain of avian flu has been monitored by health officials around the world for more than a decade for signs it could mutate into a form that is easily spread between humans. Currently, it passes mainly between infected poultry.
A flu pandemic of avian or other origin could kill more than 70 million people worldwide and lead to a “major global recession” costing more than $3 trillion, according to a worst-case scenario outlined by the World Bank in October.
H5N1 has infected at least 406 people in 15 countries since 2003, killing 63 percent of them, according to the Web site of the Geneva-based WHO.
Baxter, the world’s largest maker of blood-disease treatments, is one of the companies working on a vaccine to be used in the event of a flu pandemic. The European Medicines Agency recommended approval of Baxter’s Celvapan, the first cell culture-based vaccine for bird flu in Europe, in December.
Lab Escape
BioTest, which conducts research for Baxter, was “supposed to get non-infected testing vaccine, which was by mistake of the supplier contaminated with the H5N1 virus,” the company said in a statement last week. “If there had not been a mistake on the part of the supplier, the bird flu virus would not get into the Czech Republic in this way.”
Three influenza pandemics, including the 1918 Spanish flu that killed more than 50 million people, occurred since 1900.
Another three pandemic threats -- situations where a global epidemic is close to occurring -- have taken place. One of them, the Russian flu of 1977, is thought to have been caused by the virus escaping from a lab, according to an article on influenza pandemics published in the Scottish Medical Journal in February 2008.
The H5N1 virus, “even if it were let out of the lab, would be only lethal for birds in its present state,” said Ilaria Capua, a veterinary virologist, whose laboratory in Padova, Italy, handles some of the avian-flu screening for the World Organization for Animal Health. Capua said she has no knowledge of the situation. “In Europe, we can react fast” to outbreaks of the disease in animals, she said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Michelle Fay Cortez in London at [email protected] Gale in Singapore at [email protected]
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Watch what they are doing, not what they say. ??? ??? ??? :'(