French Sanofi-Aventis pharmaceutical group announced Thursday that it has signed a deal with French Health Ministry to produce prototype vaccine for humans to treat H5N1 virus.

A spokesman for the company said Sanofi-Aventis would supply before the end of the year 1.4 million doses of "pre-pandemic" or "prototype" vaccine to treat the strain of bird flu known as H5N1 and that it would supply "up to 28 million vaccination doses if a pandemic was declared, once the virus that caused the pandemic was identified."

The strain of bird flu known as H5N1 which has killed more than 60 people in Asia and the spread of H5N1 in birds has now reached to Europe and the Gulf.