Xinhua
Hanoi, April 21 (Xinhua) Vietnam has conducted its first large-scale trial of a locally produced vaccine against the H5N1 strain of bird flu on 30 volunteers, media reports said Monday. The trial started last weekend and was implemented on healthy volunteers aged 18-45. The volunteers are students and staff from the Hanoi-based Military Medical Institute.

The vaccine, developed from monkey kidney cells, was produced by the Vaccine and Biotechnology Products Company No.1 under the National Hygiene and Epidemiology Institute, Vietnam News reported.

The vaccine research and development started four years ago.

If the trial is successful, Vietnam will conduct the second test on 240 other students and staff of the institute in June.

If everything goes as scheduled, the H5N1 vaccine will be produced in Vietnam in 2009 at a price of $2 per dose.

An earlier human trial on 10 researchers directly involved in H5N1 vaccine production project has proved successful, the newspaper said. All the volunteers are now healthy.

Bird flu virus strain H5N1 has killed five people in Vietnam since early this year, according to the Vietnamese ministry of health.
Xinhua