The worldwide vaccination campaign is all ready to kick start under the watchful eye of respective national authorities in many countries. Regulatory authorities in China, Australia, and USA have already issued licences to the vaccine manufacturers.

Europe gave its go ahead today to one of the vaccine producers. Japan is soon to follow Europe’s footsteps. Glaxo SmithKline will supply the vaccine for the above nations.

Brazil, which records the highest death toll from the current H1N1 pandemic signed a deal for the manufacture of the vaccine with Sanofi-Aventis, a French drug company.

Mexico will begin vaccinating its frontline health workers and military personnel as it purchased bulk amounts of vaccines from Glaxo SmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis.

The Centre for disease control, USA authorised five manufacturers for vaccine supply.CSL biotherapies, a Melbourne based company is one of the primary suppliers of vaccine for both USA and Australia.

China is entirely reliant on its locally manufactured vaccine which is being supplied by domestic company called Sinovac. Nearly 39,000 people received the vaccine shots already in China.

India is currently carrying on phase 3 human trials on H1N1 vaccines supplied by three international companies Novartis, Glaxo SmithKline and Baxter and will only purchase these vaccines once they are proven to be efficacious on Indian population in these trials.

In the mean time three Indian companies, Serum, Panacea and Bharath Biotech were authorised to manufacture domestic vaccine which should be ready by March 2010.

The respective health authorities will start the vaccinations in the month of October  in many of these nations in controlled fashion.

Some of the economically well to do nations like USA, Australia, Switzerland, France, Norway and Brazil agreed to donate 10% of their vaccine stock to poorer  nations. WHO will be coordinating the distribution of these donated vaccines.

The world should acknowledge the extraordinary efforts made by both the regulatory authorities as well as manufacturers to expedite the availability of the vaccines before the winter season starts in the Southern Hemisphere.