WHO urges investment in SARS vaccine.

2003 JUL 9 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- As severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) subsides, governments need to pour more money into finding a vaccine to prevent the virus from striking again in a mutated form, the World Health Organization said on June 19, 2003.

The coronavirus that causes SARS is mutating faster than previously thought, making vaccine research difficult, but even more necessary, said Marie-Paule Kieny, head of the World Health Organization's Initiative for Vaccine Research.

"The number of mutations is up. How difficult it is to come up with a vaccine? We will know in the coming months," she told a WHO-sponsored conference on SARS research in Singapore.

Governments cannot afford to rely solely on private pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine against the flu-like illness that has killed about 800 people and sickened more than 8,400 worldwide, mostly in Asia.

New cases spiked in March and April 2003, but have plunged in June.

"Vaccine manufacturers have to make profits," she said. "If the market for SARS disappears, then their involvement, understandably, will reduce."

Previously researchers had said that although the coronavirus must have mutated to jump from animals to humans, it didn't appear to be ...