British drugmaker to donate 50 mln doses of A/H1N1 flu vaccine to WHO

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is to donate 50 million doses of A/H1N1 influenza vaccine to the World Health Organization (WHO) under an agreement signed in Geneva on Tuesday, the UN agency said.

"We welcome this very generous donation by GlaxoSmithKline, which will go to protect the health of the world's poorest people," said WHO Director General Margaret Chan in a statement.

"This is a real gesture of global solidarity towards those who would not be otherwise able to have access to the vaccine," she said.

According to WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl, the agency expects to start receiving GSK's first shipment of doses toward the end of this month or in early December, with the full 50 million doses to come probably by the end of spring next year.

"We hope it will be the first of many donations," Hartl said.

The WHO has a list of 95 developing countries that are eligible to receive donated vaccines, and aims to secure enough vaccines to cover 10 percent of the population of these countries.

Source: Xinhua