SKorea to build bird flu vaccine factory next year: ministry

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea will build its own factory to produce human bird flu vaccine, health officials said Thursday as authorities battled the country's worst outbreak among poultry.

The factory will produce enough vaccine to treat 20 million people a year and will be built next year at Hwasun, 270 kilometres (160 miles) south of Seoul, the health ministry said in a report to parliament.

It also promised to secure enough stocks of the antiviral flu medicine Tamiflu to treat 10 million people by 2012.

The factory at Hwasun will be operated by local pharmaceutical firm Green Cross, which has been developing its own vaccine.

"Our vaccine still requires further clinical tests. We are trying hard to produce it at the factory at an early date," a Green...