September 6, 2006

Indonesia to produce Tamiflu

Indonesia would produce 5 million tablets of Tamiflu this year and conduct a massive vaccination of poultry to combat bird flu, senior officials said Tuesday (Sep 5). 

Two local companies, the Kimia Farma and the Indo Farma have registered to take part in the production, said Director General of Pharmacy Services of the Indonesian Health Ministry Richard Panjaitan, adding that five million capsules of Tamiflu would be produced before December this year.

However, materials for the capsules would still be imported. Indonesia has already imported 5 million Tamiflu from India and 2 million from Switzerland.

The World Health Organization (WHO) representative to Indonesia George Peterson said as long as the bird flu epidemic still occurs in poultry, there would be occasional human cases.

Authorities and experts have said the huge territorial and large amount of backyard-centered chicken farms have hampered efforts to stamp out bird flu in Indonesia.

Peterson said the priority is to control the epidemic in birds, and the efforts need to be scaled up, he added.

More than a third of the Indonesian territory has been infected by bird flu, according to the health ministry.

Indonesia would carry out a massive vaccination on hundreds of millions of chickens in the country, Indonesia's Minister of Agriculture said.