CAIRO: The H1N1 vaccine is expected to be available in Egypt by October and will cost LE 35, Hamdallah Zedan, chairman and CEO of the Egyptian Organization for Biological Products and Vaccines (VACSERA), said. During his appearance on a local television program Wednesday morning, Zedan said that around 80,000 doses of the new vaccine will be available by next month, before the start of the Hajj season scheduled for late November. Each person needs two doses of the vaccine. Hatem Al-Gabaly, minister of health, had said that Egypt bought 5 million doses of the vaccine which will arrive intermittently. Zedan explained that while locally producing the vaccine would have cost less than importing it, Egypt would have needed 18 months to produce its first dose. He added that it is not necessary to locally produce the seasonal flu vaccine since Egypt does not need more than 600,000 doses per year, adding that its production cost can reach LE 1 billion. "The situation is now different with the bird flu and the swine flu, especially that health authorities announced that bird flu has become more aggressive, so no one can predict how it will develop and what the situation will be in the coming years, Zedan said. The Ministry of Health reported five new H1N1 cases on Tuesday, raising the total number of cases in Egypt to 901. According to the ministry's official statement, all of the new cases are Egyptians, three arriving from Saudi Arabia - only one of which was performing Umrah - one arriving from the Emirates and one case linked to a previously detected case. By press time, the ministry had announced that the number of recovered cases reached 796. In related news, China started vaccinating some 10,400 students against H1N1 and reported no side effects so far.
