Published on October 18, 2005

The Public Health Ministry has assured that by the middle of next year Thailand will have access to Tamiflu, the only antiviral drug that has been found potentially effective in treating H5N1.

Dr Thawat Suntrajarn, director general of the Department of Disease Control, said the country had asked for the right to manufacture Tamiflu or Osel Tamivir, the manufacture of which is currently monopolised by the Swiss maker Roche Holding.

He said the Health Ministry has asked the Finance Ministry and the Commerce Ministry to ask for a compulsory licence to produce the drug from the World Trade Organisation. However, he did not confirm whether the process had been approved.

Thawat said the first batch of the drug which would be produced by the Government Pharma-ceutical Organisation (GPO), would be launched next October and that it would only be enough to treat 1,000 people.

He said that to produce the drug the GPO would have to import an active ingredient called API from an Indian drug company. The API then would then be mixed with Thai herbs and produced in capsule form. However, Thawat did not comment on the standardisation of the drug or who would oversee its quality control.

The Health Ministry also plans to conduct a bird flu vaccine trial on humans next year. Thawat said the ministry has asked for the co-operation of Japan’s Osaka University to produce a pilot batch of between 30,000 and 100,000 doses of vaccine from a seed sample from the World Health Organisation.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt yesterday held discussions with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as part of his tour of Asia’s infected countries. Following the discussions Leavitt commented: “It would be my assessment that no nation is adequately prepared for a pandemic of Avian flu. Our purpose in being here is to talk about ways in which we can work together to enhance our mutual preparation.”

Over the past week, Leavitt has held talks with health officials in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam – the region considered the most likely to be the epicentre of any human epidemic.

The international scientific community fears that if the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus manages to mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans, tens of millions of people could die.

The current bird flu outbreak, which first surfaced in 2003, has now reached Europe, with Romania and Turkey last week confirming their first cases of the virus in poultry.

The Nation,

Agence France-Presse

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