India is prepared to have indigenous inject able swine flu vaccine by November this year. A top health official V.M.Katoch, Secretary, Health department told that Indian Government has a plan to have indigenous vaccine and if so happens, India will be among the first few countries to have such a vaccine to tackle H1N1 virus.
Katoch said the vaccine will be available in the market in an inject able format by the year-end.
Over the last couple of months, India has reported over 700 cases of swine flu, with Delhi and Maharashtra being the worst hit. Both the states have reported over 50 percent of the total cases in the country.
"The WHO has made available four strains and the drug controller (of India) has approved them all. Based on this, the vaccine is being developed at three places across the country.
"Three pharma companies - Serum Institute of India (Pune), Bharat Biotech (Hyderabad) and Panacea Biotech (New Delhi) - are working on developing the vaccine. The Pune company has made some real progress," he said.
While the Serum Institute is developing an "egg-based" vaccine, the other two are developing "cell line vaccines". "But all of them will be available as injections," Katoch added.
When asked about human trials, he said the health ministry has already notified health centres about this and all interested parties were welcome.
laboratory confirmed cases of influenza A (H1N1) and 1,154 deaths in over 150 countries.
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