Aline Beckstein
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Rio - Brazil will be able to produce a vaccine against bird flu in four or six months, according to the minister of Science and Techology, Sérgio Rezende. The vaccine is being developed by the Butantã Institute, a São Paulo research center responsible for producing 80% of all the sera and vaccines consumed in the country.

According to Rezende, all the Institute needs to conclude the project is the purchase of some equipment, some of it imported. The funds will come from the ministry, which has already invested around US$ 1.41 million (R$ 3 million), and the ministry of Health, which will also contribute the same amount. He also informed that vaccine will be produced from a stock (a lighter version of the virus, which doesn't cause symptoms) that will be provided by the World Health Organization.

The vaccine will be made available only in the areas in which there is an outbreak of bird flu. "That is the strategy until we have vaccine for the entire population and while there persists great uncertainty about what is going to happen," he said.

Rezende went on to say that everything indicates that the disease might reach Brazil in up to two years. "The specialists say that it will inevitably arrive in Brazil. Perhaps six months from now, perhaps in two years. Everything will depend on how it evolves in other countries."

According to the World Health Organization, 17 countries have already been affected by bird flu, none of them in South America. Since 2003 around 100 people all over the world have died of the disease, which is caused by the H5N1 virus.

Translation: David Silberstein