Bird flu vaccine gets EU permission

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has received official European Union permission to protect people against the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The new ruling for the drug Prepandrix is the first license to be given for a vaccine to be used in all of the EU member states.

Prepandrix is designed to be used in the early stages of a pandemic and the company has already received orders for the vaccines from countries including the US, Switzerland and Finland.

Emmanuel Hanon, the head of flu vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters that governments are showing real concern about the medical and economic threat of a possible H5N1 pandemic.

"It's clear that some governments are more proactive than others. The policy is evolving and I'm looking for some kind of alignment in terms of what governments are going to do," he added.

The World Health Organisation estimates that there have been a total of 382 cases of bird flu in humans with 241 deaths worldwide since disease was first identified in 2003.