WHO hopes drugs will buy time against bird flu
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The World Health Organization (WHO) began on Wednesday to build a first line of defense against a feared global bird flu pandemic with a major drug donation from a leading Swiss firm.
The United Nations agency said a donation by Swiss drug maker Roche of enough of its Tamiflu antiviral drug to treat 3 million people could slow the spread of the outbreak among humans, especially in countries too poor to afford their own stockpile.
The Basle-based pharmaceutical giant announced its move earlier in the day.
“If a flu pandemic were to emerge, these drugs could be flown quickly to the center of a potential pandemic,” WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook told a Geneva news conference.
“If it hits, and we are unprepared, there will be millions and millions of deaths,” he warned.
Fears of a global outbreak have risen since the avian virus spread recently from Asia into Siberia in eastern Russia and Kazakhstan, and the WHO has been urging governments to buy in antiviral drugs like Tamiflu.
Officials in another Siberian region, the Altai Republic, said the virus had been found in a wild duck there, although the agriculture ministry in Moscow said its spread had been curbed.
An Altai government statement said samples taken from the bird shot on August 13 indicated the presence of bird flu virus “of the fifth type.”
But it did not say whether the strain was the H5N1, which has killed at least 50 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of poultry which carry it.
GLOBAL PANDEMIC
The WHO said it was watching the outbreaks because all had the potential to trigger a global pandemic if the virus mutates and becomes easily transmittable between humans.
The last major flu pandemic was in the late 1960s when some 4 million people died and health authorities say another is long overdue.
Drug companies are currently working on a vaccine against H5N1, but in the meantime the WHO says antiviral drugs are the best option and recommends governments stockpile neuraminidase inhibitors—the class of drugs to which Tamiflu belongs.
Margaret Chan, WHO director for pandemic influenza preparedness, told journalists in Geneva that the agency was also in talks with another firm about another type of inhibitor.
She declined to give details, but the only other drug on the market is Relenza, made by Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline.
Roche said it will set aside 3 million packs of 10 Tamiflu pills—the dose is two a day for five days. Company executive David Reddy told Reuters the stockpile, which comes in the form of capsules, would be good for five years.
“This will not be directed toward any specific country. The rationale is to have rapid access to a stockpile of Tamiflu which could be deployed in any country which forms the site of outbreak of an influenza outbreak,” he said.
Roche has also received orders from around 30 countries, including Britain, France and Germany, for enough of the drug to cover between 20 and 40 percent of their populations.
But Lee warned that the drugs, although they could buy time, were not in themselves enough and countries must step up surveillance and develop their own plans for an outbreak.
According to the WHO, only 40 countries have so far heeded its call for national contingency plans for a flu pandemic.
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