Sanofi-Aventis To Give Pandemic Flu Vaccine To WHO

Len Lavenda, a spokesman for Sanofi Pasteur, said late Wednesday that the company has stopped making H5N1 flu vaccine but has not yet decided when to make donations of that vaccine or swine flu vaccine to the WHO. Currently, the company is only manufacturing seasonal flu vaccine, he said.

Last Thursday, after the World Health Organization declared a global swine flu epidemic, GlaxoSmithKline said it would be ready within weeks to begin large-scale vaccine production.

None of the vaccines are expected to be available before this fall.

The other major vaccine supplier to the U.S. market, Novartis AG of Switzerland, has turned down requests to donate pandemic flu vaccine.

Novartis spokesman Eric Althoff said Wednesday that the company's chief executive, Daniel Vasella, believes that finding a sustainable way to provide developing countries with access to vaccines is a better solution than one-time donations. Novartis instead is looking at selling vaccines to those countries at discounted prices, Althoff said.