Avian influenza vaccine plant to open in South Korea

A manufacturing site in Hwasun, South Korea, 340km southwest of the country's capital, Seoul, is to be built to produce a vaccine against the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. Once completed, the facility should have the capacity to provide drugs for 20 million patients a year, according to China's Xinhua News, citing South Korean Health Ministry sources. The southeast Asian nation has experienced outbreaks of the disease since late March, but with no confirmed human cases to date, although seven million birds have been culled.