IPB, Japan to produce bird flu super vaccine

Theresia Sufa, Bogor

The Veterinary School of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and the institute's firm PT Bogor Life Science and Technology have cooperated with Japan's Shigeta Animal Pharmaceuticals Inc. to develop a new vaccine to prevent the deadly bird flu.

Shigeta director Yoshiyuki Nishio and PT Bogor Life director Thamrin Poeloengan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Wednesday.

The team will work on an avian flu recombinant vaccine, which is claimed to be a modification of the existing vaccines currently used widely to deal with outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu virus that ravaged Asian flocks since early this year.

Many experts said the existing vaccines could not prevent humans from being infected by the virus.

PT Bogor Life operational director Kamaluddin Zarkasie said that to work effectively the new vaccine was the molecular modification of an organism that has high endurance.

"Moreover, the vaccine is made from an inactive virus so that it will be much safer than the existing one, which uses live viruses," he said after the signing at the Veterinary School Hall.

"We need the vaccine because Indonesia has many poultry farms, with about 1 billion fowl," he added.

Although no cases in humans have been found in Indonesia, 7.4 million chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons and other birds were estimated to have died from the disease and thousands others culled to prevent the virus from spreading.

Ironically, as the central government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have revealed, bird flu could have been brought into the country via illegal vaccines -- possibly from China, Mexico or Italy.

Human error is presumed to have resulted in the presence of whole live viruses in the illegal vaccines.

FAO also suspected the virus was brought in through illegally imported livestock and livestock products, which are widespread in Indonesia.

According to Kamaluddin, the team will produce 300 million dosages of the vaccine.

"The first round of production will be carried out by Shigeta, which has the infrastructure. We shall produce it ourselves after we have all the facilities -- maybe next year," he explained.

In future, he added, PT Bogor Life would have the right to sell the vaccine to other neighboring countries vulnerable to the disease, including Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.