The government, together with state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma, plans to start producing vaccines for the H1N1 and H5N1 strains of influenza by November 2010.
The plan was revealed Monday during the inauguration ceremony of Airlangga University's avian influenza research center (AIRC) bio safety level-3 (BSL-3) in Surabaya by Vice President Boediono.
"I hope the vaccines to be produced will be beneficial to the people of Indonesia," Boediono said.
The center's team of researchers handed over the seed vaccines for both H1N1 and H5N1 to Boediono, who in turn gave them to Health Minister Endang Rahayu Setyaningsih as a symbolic gesture. The minister then passed them on to PT Bio Farma.
Also attending the ceremony were National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh, East Java Governor Soekarwo, Deputy Governor Syaifullah Yusuf and Airlangga University's rector Fasichul Lisan.
Speaking at the ceremony, Boediono expressed his pride that the team of researchers could successfully develop the seed vaccines.
He also encouraged academics and industry to develop other vaccines as well as master the technology to do so for the benefit of the people.
As Indonesia is plagued by tropical diseases, the challenge was to find and develop successful vaccines, he said.
PT Bio Farma director Iskandar said the government had allocated Rp 1.3 trillion (US$139 million) to fund the research, development and production of the vaccines.
He said his company had planned to begin clinical trials in March 2010 and would start producing the H1N1 vaccine by November 2010. "We will produce about 20 million doses in our first production run," he said.
Health Minister Endang said researchers and paramedics would receive vaccines from the first production run, arguing that they were the ones who were critically exposed to the viruses in their work.
Center researcher C.A. Nidom said his team had begun research on the vaccines in 2006 after the Health Ministry handed over five strains of the avian flu virus. In August 2009, it again gave them six strains of the influenza A virus.
Following research, the 13-member team comprising researchers from Airlangga University and PT Bio Farma finally succeeded in creating and developing seed vaccines for both infectious diseases.
Nidom also expressed optimism that the vaccines would be effective in preventing the spread of the diseases among human beings, especially after his team found the vaccines effective in trials on marmots, mice and monkeys.
He claimed that Bio Farma would be successful in mass producing the vaccines as it was the only vaccine producer in Southeast Asia.
Speaking previously in Bandung, Iskandar said the vaccine factory would be established simultaneously with the development of a chicken farm in Lembang, North Bandung.
Around 48,000 poultry seeds will be developed at the facility to support the production of the vaccines by providing clean embryonated eggs as the media for developing the flu viruses using Japanese technology.
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