Why Isn There Enough Swine Flu Vaccine for the Worlds Population?
While many wealthy countries have had contingency plans for the emergence of a deadly new strain of the influenza virus for years, many developing countries lack the production ability to produce vaccines for a deadly flu pandemic in large quantities. A perspective article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on August 12, 2009 at http://www.nejm.org, titled “Poverty, Wealth, and Access to Pandemic Influenza Vaccines.” and written by the director of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan discusses the challenges of vaccinating the world against swine flu. She describes a scenario in which the swine flu virus could mutate to a more pathogenic form, which has occurred in past pandemics, and could kill millions of people in mostly developing countries who may have qualified for a swine flu vaccine, but due to shortages could not obtain one. While the cost of vaccinations is relatively low, and could be made even cheaper by wealthy countries making small donations, th
