Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/health-officials-race-to-create-h1n1-flu-vaccine Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript At the World Health Organization's annual meeting this week, a main topic was the ongoing effort to develop a vaccine against the H1N1 swine flu virus. Betty Ann Bowser reports on efforts to create a new vaccine and concerns over having the time to properly produce it. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: And next, creating a new flu vaccine. Betty Ann Bowser reports for our Health Unit, a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.BETTY ANN BOWSER, correspondent: Ever since swine flu started sweeping the globe in near pandemic proportions, health officials have been worried about creating a vaccine to fight it. It's so much of a concern that it's overshadowed all other topics on the agenda at the World Health Organization's annual meeting in Geneva this week.Dr. Margaret Chan is the director-general of the World Health Organization, or WHO.DR. MARGARET CHAN, director-general, World Health Organization: In the name of global solidarity, I have reached out to drug companies and vaccine companies and start discussion with them. I would like to thank them for their cooperation.We will look at different mechanisms to ensure that poor countries are not left behind without access to both medicines, antivirals, as well as a pandemic vaccine, should that be required. BETTY ANN BOWSER: So far, the virus has infected some 10,000 people in over 40 countries and killed more than 80.And this time, U.S. health officials say they don't want to repeat any of the mistakes that were made back in 1976, when the U.S. government implemented a nationwide vaccination program against swine flu.Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: The decision back in 1976 to both produce the vaccine against the 1976 swine flu and distribute it to as many Americans as you could was actually coupled in the same decision. So once the decision was made to make it, then they were going to give it. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Back then, after a young recruit at Ft. Dix, N.J., died from the disease, several hundred others on the base got sick. SCIENTIST: For the first time in the history of the world, we have a vaccine ready in plenty of time to protect everyone against this infection.