Region will not stockpile bird flu drug

Bay of Plenty health officials have rejected government advice to stockpile the anti-viral bird flu drug Tamiflu.

The Health Ministry last November asked all district health boards to stock the drug, which can help protect people from potentially deadly bird flu.

And last week the World Health Organisation reaffirmed Tamiflu should be used to treat suspected cases of human bird flu and to prevent the disease in healthcare workers or others who may have been exposed to infection, but clinical trials were lacking to show any effectiveness against the deadly H5N1 virus.

The WHO called for urgent studies to determine optimal doses of Tamiflu to be used against human bird flu.

The H5N1 strain has killed 98 people, roughly half of the 177 who have contracted it since late 2003, and experts fear a pandemic if the disease evolves into a form which can be transmitted easily between humans.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board chairwoman Mary Hackett said Tamiflu's expiry date was a key reason for the decision not to stockpile and instead efforts were being made to build up supplies of antibiotics.

"One of the problems is that Tamiflu has an expiry date. If we do stockpile antibiotics, we are turning them over because we use a lot of antibiotics. But the Tamiflu we are not using for anything else," she told the Bay of Plenty Times.

The board has extra supplies of personal protective equipment and is counting on the Ministry of Health to distribute its stockpile of Tamiflu to good effect should a pandemic hit.

The government has a $26 million stockpile of Tamiflu -- enough to treat 21 per cent of the population in the event of an avian influenza pandemic.

Last week The Dominion Post reported that just four DHBs -- in Wellington, Hawke's Bay, Hutt Valley and Taranaki -- had extra supplies of Tamiflu, while four more had supplies under order.

- NZPA