Giuseppe
Emeritus
Transcript of virtual press conference with Gregory Hartl, WHO Spokesperson for Global Alert and Response and Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, World Health Organization (Excerpts)
Transcript of virtual press conference with Gregory Hartl, WHO Spokesperson for Global Alert and Response and Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, World Health Organization
[Original Full Document: LINK. EDITED.]
13 July 2009
Mr Gregory Hartl:
This is WHO Headquarters in Geneva. We welcome you all to this virtual press briefing today. My name is Gregory Hartl and with us today is Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, the Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research at WHO Headquarters who will make a few opening remarks about the results of the SAGE Committee meeting of last week and their recommendations and then we will open the floor to questions. As always, please, if you have a question to ask please dial 01 to get into the queue to ask the question and state your name and organization. Dr Kieny over to you:
Dr Marie-Paule Kieny:
Thank you very much Gregory. It is a pleasure to be with you again to give you this update on the recommendation of the SAGE on H1N1 vaccine and vaccination. The SAGE is the Strategy Advisory Group of Experts, that is the highest level of advisory body in WHO on immunization matters and they met last week on 7 July to be updated about the epidemiological status and the clinical status of H1N1 as well as being provided with an update on expected vaccine availability. They also reviewed the status of production of the current seasonal epidemic vaccine.
As you know we are coming to the end of the production campaign for the vaccine which is meant to be used to fight seasonal epidemic of influenza in the northern hemisphere starting this fall and they also met to review various vaccine options that would be available both for seasonal immunization and for H1N1, and to make recommendations to the Director-General.
The SAGE, which was helped by a number of experts and also by another committee that we have established in May, which is more specific about the expertise in the area of influenza, so the group together came together with recommendations that were endorsed by the Director-General on Friday. In general these recommendations take into consideration as I said the epidemiology, the severity of the disease, the expected availability of H1N1 vaccine and have come up with a number of recommendations.
I will be very happy to detail them following questions but just to give you an idea of how they go.
First, the Committee recognized that the H1N1 pandemic is unstoppable and therefore that all countries will need to have access to vaccines.
Second, the Committee also recognized, really acknowledged the fact that different countries have different epidemiological and other situations and therefore that the countries themselves will have to take decisions that are best adapted to their own national situation but in terms of giving indicative consideration and guidance to countries, SAGE recommended first that healthcare workers should be immunized in all countries in order to maintain functional health systems as the pandemic evolves.
So there are several reasons to protect health workers when they put themselves at risk, when they care for patients; the other one is because they need to remain in good health condition to care for pandemic influenza sick people and the third is because during the time of a pandemic people will continue to be ill with other diseases and these diseases will also need to be taken care of.
Second the SAGE considered the gravity of the disease in various groups and considered that countries may have different strategies when they implement immunization campaigns.
So the first one would be to try to stop transmission and if you want to stop transmission as much as you can, and this may still be possible, in certain settings at least to mitigate transmission, you target different population groups, and if you just want to have other objectives: So the first objective is to reduce transmission as much as possible.
Another objective might be to reduce morbidity and mortality and the third objective, but there is no priority in order, would be as I said, to protect the health care system. In view of these three objectives countries might have, and depending on their own decision, they may consider immunization of several different groups - one of them being pregnant women e.g. as I am sure you have followed in the news, pregnant women are at elevated risk of severe diseases and death; other groups would be anybody over 6 months of age with chronic health conditions and these induced variety of conditions which are putting more people more at risk from having severe illness.
This could be chronic respiratory disease - it could be obesity which has been now shown as being a risk factor.
Another group to be considered would be healthy adults of over 15 years of age and less than 49 which have been shown also to be surprisingly, although were healthy, at risk of death. Yet another group would be healthy children and this is mainly to reduce transmission as we discussed because children are amplifiers of infection because they meet in groups. Yet another group would be healthy elderly adults and all country conditions need to be taken into consideration when countries make decisions.
The SAGE also then, to further go into decision and in going out with recommendation for target groups, considered the safety of adjuvant vaccines and they noted that there was, so far, no concern of the safety of vaccine adjuvanted with the new oil-in-water adjuvants but that it was urgent to collect safety data in groups for which safety data is not available in numbers for the time being.
They also noted that because these vaccines are novel, use for some of them, a very good post marketing surveillance and pharmaco- vigilance has to be implemented when the vaccine is deployed and that international cooperation is requested to have results of any signal that some vaccine might not be safe, which we don?t expect but you never know, be shared with the international community as soon as possible.
Finally, they considered recommendations on seasonal influenza vaccination.
They were informed that the campaign for preparation of seasonal vaccine for the northern hemisphere were close to completion with more than 90% of production being finalized by end of July and therefore considered that there was no need to recommend a switch from seasonal to H1N1 vaccine.
They also considered that at the current time there would be no change in recommendation of WHO for the seasonal vaccine for the next season for the northern hemisphere, that preparations should continue for this immunization as if there would not have been a pandemic. So these are the main messages and I will be most happy to answer your questions.
(...)
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Transcript of virtual press conference with Gregory Hartl, WHO Spokesperson for Global Alert and Response and Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, World Health Organization
[Original Full Document: LINK. EDITED.]
13 July 2009
Mr Gregory Hartl:
This is WHO Headquarters in Geneva. We welcome you all to this virtual press briefing today. My name is Gregory Hartl and with us today is Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, the Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research at WHO Headquarters who will make a few opening remarks about the results of the SAGE Committee meeting of last week and their recommendations and then we will open the floor to questions. As always, please, if you have a question to ask please dial 01 to get into the queue to ask the question and state your name and organization. Dr Kieny over to you:
Dr Marie-Paule Kieny:
Thank you very much Gregory. It is a pleasure to be with you again to give you this update on the recommendation of the SAGE on H1N1 vaccine and vaccination. The SAGE is the Strategy Advisory Group of Experts, that is the highest level of advisory body in WHO on immunization matters and they met last week on 7 July to be updated about the epidemiological status and the clinical status of H1N1 as well as being provided with an update on expected vaccine availability. They also reviewed the status of production of the current seasonal epidemic vaccine.
As you know we are coming to the end of the production campaign for the vaccine which is meant to be used to fight seasonal epidemic of influenza in the northern hemisphere starting this fall and they also met to review various vaccine options that would be available both for seasonal immunization and for H1N1, and to make recommendations to the Director-General.
The SAGE, which was helped by a number of experts and also by another committee that we have established in May, which is more specific about the expertise in the area of influenza, so the group together came together with recommendations that were endorsed by the Director-General on Friday. In general these recommendations take into consideration as I said the epidemiology, the severity of the disease, the expected availability of H1N1 vaccine and have come up with a number of recommendations.
I will be very happy to detail them following questions but just to give you an idea of how they go.
First, the Committee recognized that the H1N1 pandemic is unstoppable and therefore that all countries will need to have access to vaccines.
Second, the Committee also recognized, really acknowledged the fact that different countries have different epidemiological and other situations and therefore that the countries themselves will have to take decisions that are best adapted to their own national situation but in terms of giving indicative consideration and guidance to countries, SAGE recommended first that healthcare workers should be immunized in all countries in order to maintain functional health systems as the pandemic evolves.
So there are several reasons to protect health workers when they put themselves at risk, when they care for patients; the other one is because they need to remain in good health condition to care for pandemic influenza sick people and the third is because during the time of a pandemic people will continue to be ill with other diseases and these diseases will also need to be taken care of.
Second the SAGE considered the gravity of the disease in various groups and considered that countries may have different strategies when they implement immunization campaigns.
So the first one would be to try to stop transmission and if you want to stop transmission as much as you can, and this may still be possible, in certain settings at least to mitigate transmission, you target different population groups, and if you just want to have other objectives: So the first objective is to reduce transmission as much as possible.
Another objective might be to reduce morbidity and mortality and the third objective, but there is no priority in order, would be as I said, to protect the health care system. In view of these three objectives countries might have, and depending on their own decision, they may consider immunization of several different groups - one of them being pregnant women e.g. as I am sure you have followed in the news, pregnant women are at elevated risk of severe diseases and death; other groups would be anybody over 6 months of age with chronic health conditions and these induced variety of conditions which are putting more people more at risk from having severe illness.
This could be chronic respiratory disease - it could be obesity which has been now shown as being a risk factor.
Another group to be considered would be healthy adults of over 15 years of age and less than 49 which have been shown also to be surprisingly, although were healthy, at risk of death. Yet another group would be healthy children and this is mainly to reduce transmission as we discussed because children are amplifiers of infection because they meet in groups. Yet another group would be healthy elderly adults and all country conditions need to be taken into consideration when countries make decisions.
The SAGE also then, to further go into decision and in going out with recommendation for target groups, considered the safety of adjuvant vaccines and they noted that there was, so far, no concern of the safety of vaccine adjuvanted with the new oil-in-water adjuvants but that it was urgent to collect safety data in groups for which safety data is not available in numbers for the time being.
They also noted that because these vaccines are novel, use for some of them, a very good post marketing surveillance and pharmaco- vigilance has to be implemented when the vaccine is deployed and that international cooperation is requested to have results of any signal that some vaccine might not be safe, which we don?t expect but you never know, be shared with the international community as soon as possible.
Finally, they considered recommendations on seasonal influenza vaccination.
They were informed that the campaign for preparation of seasonal vaccine for the northern hemisphere were close to completion with more than 90% of production being finalized by end of July and therefore considered that there was no need to recommend a switch from seasonal to H1N1 vaccine.
They also considered that at the current time there would be no change in recommendation of WHO for the seasonal vaccine for the next season for the northern hemisphere, that preparations should continue for this immunization as if there would not have been a pandemic. So these are the main messages and I will be most happy to answer your questions.
(...)
-
------