The government has allowed six national pharmaceutical companies to prepare anti-bird flu vaccine and to pile up sufficient stock to meet any emergency in future, it is learnt.
Ironically, a company whose stock was sealed in Karachi two days back for manufacturing substandard medicines is also included in the list.
Sources in the health ministry told Business Recorder that the pharmaceutical companies had sought the government's approval to procure Tamiflu, an anti-bird flu vaccine. The government has already had a stock of around 8,000 vaccines lying with the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Sources said although sufficient stock of Tamiflu was available, the decision to allow production of anti-bird flu vaccine locally had been taken to meet any emergency like situation.
It is reliably learnt that those companies allowed by the health ministry included Roche Pakistan Limited, Brookes Pharmaceutical Labs (Pak) Ltd, Hilton Pharma, Atco Laboratories (Pvt) Ltd, Medicaids Pharmaceutical and Zafa Pharmaceutical Laboratories (Pvt) Ltd.
After hitting NWFP and the surroundings of the federal capital, the government has confirmed presence of avian influenza in the Punjab as well. It is worth mentioning the government has repeatedly ruled out the threat of bird-to-human transmission of H5N1 virus.
However, health experts do emphasis that the virus was potentially very dangerous because it was mutating at a very high rate into different new strains of H5N1 that eventually might spread between humans. They are of the view that if or when this new H5N1 bird flu virus evolves to a stage of efficiently transmitting among humans then a world-wide epidemic or pandemic will occur with potentially consequences for everyone.
Initially, H5N1 was only very deadly for farm chickens with almost 100 per cent mortality rate and humans could only become infected through eating half-cooked chicken meat and even then it was hard to become infected.