Virologists have called for South Africa to build up vaccine production capacity if it wants to be prepared for influenza pandemics such as the current swine flu outbreak.
The group of virologists, hosted by the Africa Genome Education Institute, convened in Cape Town on Friday to discuss local vaccine production and how to deal with viral outbreaks in South Africa.
They said increasing vaccine production would require long-term planning and private-public partnership.
Professor Barry Schoub, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said: "Well over 100 000 cases (of swine flu) have been detected worldwide. South Africa had 125 cases by Monday this week. Fortunately they've all been relatively mild cases."
However, this figure may be the "tip of the iceberg" since many cases have probably gone unrecorded.
Swine flu - officially the "H1N1 2009" flu - was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), after it first appeared in Mexico in March.
This classification reflects how rapidly the virus spreads, rather than its severity.
A vaccination is the first line of defence against a pandemic like this, however the WHO expects that this will only be available in September.
Schoub recommended reserving the vaccine for healthcare workers on the front line of the disease and for high-risk groups when it reaches South Africa.
"With seasonal flu, people over 65 are a priority for the vaccine. But with the pandemic H1N1, the risk groups are children, who are 'amplifiers' of the disease, people with chronic lung and heart disease, pregnant women, and people with obesity."
There was not enough information yet to know how this strain affected people with weakened immune systems, such as those infected with HIV.
Pandemics of this nature were cyclical, occurring every 15 to 50 years, or two to three times a century.
But without the capacity to make vaccinations locally, South Africa remained vulnerable.
Professor Anna-Lise Williamson, from UCT's Division of Medical Virology, said: "There are fewer and fewer companies making vaccines globally because it's not a lucrative market, and the financial risk is so huge that to put government money into it is not feasible," .
A possible solution to this was a public-private partnership, where the financial risk of developing vaccine capacity was spread beyond a single state institution or company.