Claudia B Flisi
Scientist Live
06/13/2010
Certain diseases – rabies, meningitis, cholera and yellow fever, for example – are natural-born killers. Even a prosaic cold-weather flu can be fatal. As many as half a million people die from influenza every year. So a decision to specialise in vaccines against such diseases makes good sense socially and ethically as well as commercially.
In Rosia, a small town near Siena, in Italy’s Tuscany region, vaccines for threatening illnesses, including polio, diphtheria and tetanus, are produced and packaged by Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, a division of Swiss-based Novartis AG.
Novartis is the fifth-largest vaccine manufacturer in the world and it is also the second-largest supplier of influenza vaccines in the United States.
To preserve a safe and sterile environment, everyone at the Novartis plant in Rosia has to respect Good Manufacturing Practices. GMP are standard guidelines set out by the US Food & Drug Administration to ensure that the development and manufacture of food and drugs are carried out safely. Here up to 35 different vaccines are prepared and packaged for shipment to 70 countries around the world.
The only workers who do not have to follow the GMP-mandated dress code are three hard-working ABB robots.
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