Opinion Poultry Production

Monday 24 September 2007 « Previous | Next »

Releasing vaccines faster

During the World Congress of the World Veterinary Poultry Association held in Beijing from 12-15 September, top specialists made it clear that the spread of Avian Influenza can be linked to migrating wild birds, but the majority of the spread in infections could be linked to product movements.

From other diseases we often see connections with movements of people and live animals or the transport of products. The human drive to create a united society and mingling of people of all origins seems to be taken on also by bacteria and viruses. They quickly spread around the world and there seems to be no difference between micro-organisms that affect plants, animals and people.

When reading the call from EU commissioner Markos Kyprianou to spend more money on research to develop new vaccines against emerging diseases, I remembered words from a leading scientist in the pharmaceutical industry. He said that more and more research will be terminated and or moved to countries outside the EU as long the political arena keeps on complicating, thus increasing costs of research and demand for more and more documentation.

The demand for an increasing number of documents extends the time before a new product can be released. Country officials in and outside the EU often keep desperately needed products on hold because of simple administrative reasons. Frequently products that have gone through an intensive screening procedure in one country have to go through similar procedures in other countries, because the authorities there seem to believe that they can do better than others, or perhaps they like to show-off their importance.

It would be great if politicians would have more trust in the work others have done and waste less time and public money on reviewing new product documents that have been reviewed by several qualified authorities elsewhere. This would shorten the time taken to bring new vaccines to the market, reduce the costs of it and speed up the battle against emerging diseases.

Author: Wiebe van der Sluis
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Comments ( 9 )

please send me at lease thirty words use in poultry my email is okejibamidele@yahoo.com

okeji ` // Monday 10 March 2008

I'm of the opinion that truly much of the spread of deadly viral diseases[including HPAI] is through movement of animal products and therefore more of the emphasis should be more on resricting the mobility of these products from an affected region[s] than to the already developed preventive measures[vaccines]

Amenya Hesbon[Univ of Nairobi BVM student] // Monday 01 October 2007

Discussing vaccine registration is a bit ahead of the game. First you need to discuss the desirability of vaccination, then the type (heterologous, homologous, autogenous etc), then trade issues if vaccination is used and only when all that is sorted out does it make sense to speed up registration procedures. As AI is a notifiable disease vaccination merely delays the inevitable culling since it can, at best, reduce susceptibilty to infection, not prevent it. Studies have shown field immunity to not be much more than 70%. Is that good enough?

Kevin Lovell, Southern African Poultry Association // Monday 01 October 2007

i have a farm in pakistan.i m dealer.pls send me some books about infections.

iqbal nadeem // Thursday 04 October 2007

This is a debatable and hot issue ever , no question speeding up the vaccine development will be of paramount importance but it should be speeding up in a slow way pre-conditioned with enough field analytical data .I am afraid the market contests and the feeling of being number one in the market share will adversely exploite the sincere call for faster vaccine release !!!

Dr.Borhan Eldin Elmeki // Sunday 30 September 2007

the majority spready of the AI could be linked with the products, in a country like Afghanistan where no poultry industry developed the cases mostly linked in the areas where live birds crossed from neighbouring countries, but the processed meat is frozen i dont know how the resistant of the virus against this frozen meat, and what about feed thanks. Samsor

Dr. Abdul Qader Samsor,Livestock advisor / ASAP / UAID // Sunday 30 September 2007

Being associated with an avian Biological Company, I second the opinion of the author. There ought to be a stadard affirmation from the nations on such global maladies like AI. The geo-political scenario must NOT be a limiting factor in the swift and accessible reach of the remedial efforts being done by the scientists and researchers.Besides this logistics and regulatory limitations, there must be an international policy devised to synchronise the R & D activities and information from the EU, for example, with the regions like South East Asia etc. Still a lot more work, a lot more R & D is required for certain Avian Diseases and specially for AI, in some parts of the world, where the challenge of HPAI is very high! Regards, Dr.Asif From Ceva-EVP Pakistan.

Dr.Asif Mehboob Butt // Friday 28 September 2007

The article contains a very good opinion/practise in a situation whereby there are sincere operators.In nigaria,there have been some cases of drugs/vaccines destrucution by the regulatory authority due to non conformity with standard yet these products are release for export from the producers' country.I would rather appeal to all concern in the production of these products to be more honest and be accurate to avoid continuous laboratory analysis before being release to market for farmers' uses.

Bolarinwa Ganiyu.nigeria // Wednesday 26 September 2007

i have a farm in pakistan.i m dealer.pls send me some books about infections.

iqbal nadeem // Tuesday 25 September 2007