Roche Canada stops distributing oseltamivir to ensure future supply
Quebec

David Spurgeon

Canadian federal officials are trying to damp down concern about a possible flu pandemic, after reports of Canadians stockpiling the flu treatment oseltamivir (Tamiflu) prompted Roche Canada to cease distribution of the drug to pharmacies until the flu season begins.

David Butler-Jones, Canada�s chief medical officer of health, said that although the government is stockpiling oseltamivir as a precautionary measure he personally had no intention of buying the drug for his home and that healthy Canadians have no need to lay in supplies. He said he expected that the government would also buy zanamivir (Relenza), another antiviral, and amantadine, an older drug that had not been shown to be effective against human cases of avian flu but that might be useful if the virus changed and becomes readily transmissible between humans.

The federal health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, reassured listeners to an interview on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio programme ("The Current," 27 October) that the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which had led to the culling of 150 million birds worldwide, had not yet recombined with a human influenza strain.

Roche Canada recently sent an "urgent" letter to Canadian pharmacies saying it would "prioritise" distribution of oseltamivir when the flu season began to those patients most at risk of developing serious complications.

Some 4061 prescriptions were written for the drug in September, which compares which 421 in the same month last year. More than 53 000 prescriptions were written for it last February and March. Canadian governments have stockpiled 35 million oseltamivir pills, and some doctors who expect to treat patients with flu have amassed pills. The government in Alberta has 2.6 million doses stockpiled and that in Ontario about 12.5 million.

At a conference in Ottawa on pandemic preparations, attended by officials from 30 countries, Lee Jong-wook, director general of the World Health Organisation, said Roche has agreed to share its licence for oseltamivir with other drug companies.

Jack Kay, president of Apotex, Canada�s largest manufacturer of generic drugs, said the company has started work on a synthetic copy of oseltamivir (Globe and Mail, 26 Oct, sect A: 7). It will learn in 6-8 weeks whether the project is viable, and after that it will be 8-12 months before a product will be ready to submit to Canadian health regulators.

In the same article Jim Keon, president of the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said that the Canadian federal health minister has the authority under the Patent Act to declare a national emergency and issue licences to manufacture a generic version of oseltamivir. Officials estimate that a pandemic strain of the flu would be likely to kill between 11 000 and 58 000 people in Canada�far more than the 4000 to 8000 killed each year by less virulent flu strains.