In practice, most vaccination programs against the H9N2 variant of bird flu appear to be ineffective in poultry. This is the conclusion of Xue Pan after research with which he hopes to obtain his doctorate at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) next Wednesday.
The H9N2 bird flu virus is the most common and most damaging low-pathogenic avian flu virus in the world, which not only seriously harms livestock farming, but also poses a huge challenge to public health. According to Pan, vaccination is the most important and effective strategy to control this virus.
However, that is still not enough. That was reason for him to look at how the mechanism around the vaccination works and to find out which factors can disrupt the effectiveness of this vaccine. He also looked at ideas to improve the effectiveness of this vaccine.