Chairman and chief executive of the drugmaker Novartis Daniel Vasella on Tuesday warned that governments now caneling H1N1 vaccine orders would likely be treated differently in future pandemic situations, Agence France-Presse reports. "The same governments that exerted a lot of pressure on the industry (...) to deliver vaccines very quickly were the same governments that then said 'we don't want any more what we ordered', once they saw they ordered too much," Vasella said. "If you want an effective vaccine industry you have to be consequent, because the next time that there will be a pandemic - and there will be another one - the governments who have been reliable partners will be treated preferentially" (1/26).

In related news, BusinessDay/allAfrica reports the South African Department of Health has placed an order for 1.3 million doses of H1N1 vaccine, with the first batches scheduled to arrive as early as February. The Health Department says it will begin vaccinating people in high-priority groups in March (Kahn, 1/27).

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