Roche increasing their production of Tamiflu

4th May, 2009

Roche said on Saturday that it is increasing its production of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, in response to a request by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the deployment of stockpiles of the drug, which has been shown to be effective work in treating the swine flu virus that is currently spreading across the world.

The stockpiles include 5 million courses of treatment - both the 2 million held by WHO and the 3 million treatment course rapid response stockpile held by Roche.

Roche, who are based in Basel, Switzerland, said it is increasing its output of Tamiflu to maximum to meet the rising demand for the drug.

Tamiflu is one of two drugs that have been shown to be effective against the new H1N1 swine-flu virus. The second drug, called Relenza, is made GlaxoSmithKline PLC, who are based in the UK.

Both Tamiflu and Relenza work to decrease the severity of the symptoms of flu. They can both also be taken prophylactically.

WHO on Saturday kept the pandemic alert for swine flu at phase 5, saying that there is no evidence of outbreaks of the disease outside of North America.

However, the director of WHO maintained that they did nevertheless expect the highest global alert level, phase 6, to be reached eventually.