Sick people 'would be bird flu priority'

Drugs to control a bird flu pandemic would first be used for sick people and a priority treatment list which includes cabinet ministers is just a draft, Director of Public Health Mark Jacobs said today.

National MP Tony Ryall revealed the existence of the list in Parliament yesterday, forcing an admission from Health Minister Pete Hodgson that he had not known it existed.

Mr Ryall's official documents suggest 85,550 courses of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu -- 10 per cent of the national stock -- should be set aside for people identified as critical staff.

Those critical staff include all 21 cabinet ministers, health workers and people who run essential and emergency services.

Dr Jacobs said no policy decisions had been made on how stocks of Tamiflu would be distributed in a pandemic.

Officials were anticipating most of the stockpile would be used for those who become sick and the priority list was a draft, he said on NewstalkZB.

Mr Ryall claimed yesterday the list had been kept secret, and he believed it should be published so people knew what was going on.

"I think it's incredibly concerning that the minister seems to be completely out of touch with the work that's going on with this ... he seems to be completely unaware of the answers to a lot of the questions that the public would be asking," Mr Ryall said.

Mr Hodgson said a list would be of little use.

"You cannot have a useful response to who should get Tamiflu until the nature of the virus, which sections of the community it is most likely to affect, are known and that is not possible until there is a bug to respond to," he said.

Mr Hodgson has previously said enough Tamiflu doses have been stockpiled to cover about 21 per cent of the population, a better situation than in most countries.

- NZPA