MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Crucial WHO assembly to decide on A/H1N1 flu vaccine production

The spread of swine flu and possible vaccine production dominate the agenda of the World Health Organization assembly which begins Monday in Geneva until May 22.

Health experts are closely tracking the spread of the virus in Spain, Britain and Japan, as Tokyo confirmed dozens of new cases among teenagers and shut down affected schools.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan is expected to reveal experts' recommendations on the production of a swine flu vaccine. Decisions have to be made, such as how much to produce, how it will be distributed and who should get it.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit WHO on Tuesday and meet with senior representatives from the vaccine industry.

However the WHO assembly begins with a liability regarding vaccines. The international community has failed to agree on a wine flu plan to share virus research information and stocks of vaccines in the event of a global pandemic.

An intergovernmental WHO meeting in Geneva, in advance of the annual assembly, ended with a consensus on most issues, but left data-sharing between laboratories and intellectual property rights on viruses unresolved.

The WHO meeting had been planned for some time, but took on new urgency with the outbreak last month of the new AH1N1 strain of swine flu. Discussions on the subject began in 2007 following an outbreak of avian influenza in Asia.

At the time, Indonesia raised the issue of sharing vaccines between industrialized and developing countries, which do not have the means to produce enough doses in the event of a global pandemic.

According to the latest WHO reports the virus has sickened at least 8,480 people in 39 countries and killed 75, most of them in Mexico.

Turkey and India reported their first cases of AH1N1 flu on Saturday, all involving air passengers arriving from the United States.

On Sunday, Japan's health ministry confirmed 16 more cases, raising the country's tally to 21. The ministry said the new cases are all teenagers from several high schools in the prefectures of Osaka and neighboring Hyogo.

China also confirmed a third case of swine flu in an 18-year-old student, who recently returned from the United States

In South America Chile's Health minister confirmed the country's first case of the H1N1 flu virus in a news conference on Sunday. The person who contracted the flu was a 32-year-old Chilean woman who recently returned to Chile from the Dominican Republic, said Health Minister Alvaro Erazo. The woman was in good health and receiving anti-viral treatment in a hospital, the health minister said.