Belgium to boost bird flu anti-viral stocks
20/1/2006 11:35
Belgium will have some 3 million doses of the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu by
the end of this year, local media reported in Brussels on Thursday. Swiss
pharmaceuticals manufacturer Roche has informed the Belgian inter-ministerial
influenza commissionership of the nation 's expected supply status. It means
that Belgium will have a sufficient stock of the medicine three months earlier
than planned, lccal newspaper "De Tijd" reported. At the end of 2004, Belgium
had just 36,000 usable doses and 400,000 doses in raw material. To prepare
for a possible avian bird flu pandemic, the Belgian federal government decided
to boost its stocks of the Tamiflu drug. A stock of 3 million doses would be
sufficient to treat 30 percent of the Belgian population. Recently, concerns
of an outbreak of bird flu have been intensified with the deaths of several
children in Turkey recently. Tamiflu is described as a viral inhibitor and
does not work as a vaccination against the dangerous H5N1 strain of the bird flu
virus.
Xinhua news
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