Roche to Allow Vietnam to Make Tamiflu -Media
Wed Nov 9, 2005
HANOI (Reuters) - Swiss drug maker Roche has agreed to give bird flu-hit Vietnam the right to make the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu and production could start early next year, state radio said on Wednesday.
Vietnam has 57 plants capable of producing the drug, thought to be among the best available should the H5N1 bird flu virus start to jump easily between people, and Roche would pick its local partner, the Voice of Vietnam added.
Roche representatives in Hanoi told Reuters the company had offered several options for Vietnam to produce the medicine and it was up to the government to decide how it wanted to proceed.
They declined to comment on details of the production plan.
Roche is the only manufacturer of Tamiflu, which can reduce the severity of flu and might slow the spread of a much-feared pandemic should the virus, which has killed 64 people in Asia, 42 of them in Vietnam, become able to spread from person to person.
Under pressure from generic drug companies and politicians in developing nations and the United States, Roche agreed in October to discuss granting licenses to make versions of Tamiflu.
Vietnam has ordered 25 million Tamiflu tablets and the radio said Roche had agreed to deliver 2 million tablets between now and the end of the year, eight million tablets during the first half of 2006 and 15 million tablets in the second half.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese researchers said they would begin producing bird flu vaccines for humans from Thursday.
The vaccines would be tested on volunteers before mass production, the online newspaper VietnamNet quoted officials from the Health Ministry as saying.
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