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China Sailor
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Here is an article that explains why Tamiflu is hard to get:
HONG KONG - ROCHE, the maker of the main drug against a bird flu epidemic, is under growing pressure to allow production of generic versions of the medicine. But the Swiss company and some external experts say production of the drug, Tamiflu, is so complex and time-consuming that even generic makers would be unable to increase global supplies quickly.
Those putting pressure on Roche include the head of the United Nations and health officials.
They are asking whether the health of hundreds of millions of people in a possible pandemic should depend on the efficiency and productivity of a single corporation. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan raised the issue last Thursday at a little- noticed visit to the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
While he stopped short of calling for compulsory licensing by Roche, Mr Annan spoke broadly about the need to make sure that intellectual property rights do not obstruct the availability of not only Tamiflu but also vaccines at prices the poor can afford.
At the weekend, Dr Kou Hsu-sung, director-general of Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control, was even more critical.
He said Taiwanese scientists knew how to make Tamiflu and were trying to balance respect for Roche's intellectual property rights with Taiwan's national security.
'We are disappointed that WHO refused to press Roche to make it a generic in a situation like this,' he said.
On Monday, Roche said Tamiflu production involved 10 steps - one of them potentially explosive - and required up to 12 months.
'No one can do it faster,' the company said.
'Our assumption is that it would take a generic company about three years to gear up. Therefore, it does not make sense to out-license manufacturing.'
A Roche spokesman said there would be enough Tamiflu this year to treat tens of millions of people, but the firm could not immediately supply the millions of doses that were being ordered by 40 nations.
Mr Klaus Stoehr, head of the WHO's global influenza programme, also said generic manufacture of Tamiflu could not happen quickly because the production process was too complex.
'There will be no way in the next two years a company would be able to produce generic Tamiflu,' he told a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in San Francisco, on the same day that Mr Annan was visiting the WHO headquarters.
But he added that even if Roche produced Tamiflu at full capacity for the next 10 years, and the drug was stockpiled, there would be enough at the end of that period for only 20 per cent of the world's population.
There is no proven preventive vaccine yet available in meaningful quantities to fight the avian flu that is spreading among birds in Asia and has surfaced in some European flocks.
So hopes are riding on Tamiflu as a treatment for infected people.
Of the more than 100 people known to have been infected, mostly poultry workers, about 60 have died.
Health officials fear the virus may mutate to allow human-to-human infection.
And if that is not enough, without drugs this may be hard to stop:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/10/11/birdflu.trouble.reut/index.html
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 11:09 am on Oct. 12, 2005
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breconion
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Quote: from breconion on 4:44 pm on Oct. 12, 2005
Just heard on Sky news that the tests on the european suspect birds is negative.
Seems as tho that report was wrong and the birds did have avian flu.
But shit 60+ dead in 2 years some places have that many dead on the roads every day.
Lets just hope that it doesn't jump to humans.
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Bangkok Women : Meet Sensual Bangkok Women
Posted on: 11:37 am on Oct. 13, 2005
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Skip
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Quote: from breconion on 12:05 am on Oct. 14, 2005
But shit 60+ dead in 2 years some places have that many dead on the roads every day.
How assinine! People die on roads because big hulking machines run astray. Maybe you thought SARS Virus stood for Silly Ass Reason to Skip Vacation, eh dimwit?
Well a lot of people survive auto accidents these days. But so far, according to satistics, there is a 75% fatality rate for those who've come into contact with the Avian flu.
It was just such a flu of avian origin mixing genetic materials with the human flu that raced around the globe- just like SARS did- in 1918 as it wiped 40,000,000+ people off the face of this earth.
To date, the current 75% fatality rate for having contracted this avian flu, is for a disease which HAS jumped across the species barrier BUT has NOT combined genetic code with the human flu virus, yet.
When it does so- and it is imminent that it will- we will be playing catch-up digging mass graves.
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 5:00 pm on Oct. 13, 2005
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stu
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why worry.1,000,000+ people die every year from regular flu and for the whore mongers like me hunderds of millions have H.I V around the world for which there is no cure, When your time is up,your time is up >U will go one way or another-fall off a chair or choke on a fish bone ect. much to do about nothing
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Sexy Bangkok Girls
Posted on: 5:51 pm on Oct. 13, 2005
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DaffyDuck
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Quote: from Bangkoksexydotcom on 8:35 pm on Oct. 12, 2005
Were to by gasmasks?
Quote: from China Sailor on 8:37 pm on Oct. 12, 2005
The facemasks used during the SARS campaign should be sufficent.
Idiotic!
Either 'solution' is nearly pointless and useless when dealing with the spread of virii - particularly the SARS type face masks (which were just as useless with SARS, by the way). The gasmask *could* provide a better level protection, if you combine it with a biohazard suit.
So, class, anyone care to venture why the infection's pathology renders these 'protections' nearly useless?
Stay away from sick people - best advice.
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 1:52 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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DaffyDuck
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Quote: from Skip on 5:28 am on Oct. 14, 2005
But so far, according to satistics, there is a 75% fatality rate for those who've come into contact with the Avian flu.
Bzzzt! This statistic refers to people that have CONTRACTED the avian flu, not merely come in contact with it - there is a HUGE difference.
Many more people come in contact with influenza, than actually contract it, or develop fully blown symptoms. As with most influenza infections, the elderly and the very young are the host-groups most likely to contract it, and most likely to die from it. The same held true for SARS. Of those that have contracted it, and developed symptoms, there may be a 75% fatality rate - but that certainly does not mean you get it, and you die from it, if you share the same room with someone.
We don't need any more hyperbole with this.
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Bangkok Women : Meet Beautiful Thai Girls
Posted on: 1:59 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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Broken Leg
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Quote: from Skip on 5:28 am on Oct. 14, 2005
When it does so- and it is imminent that it will- we will be playing catch-up digging mass graves.
Quote: from stu on 6:20 am on Oct. 14, 2005
why worry.1,000,000+ people die every year from regular flu and for the whore mongers like me hunderds of millions have H.I V around the world for which there is no cure, When your time is up,your time is up >U will go one way or another-fall off a chair or choke on a fish bone ect. much to do about nothing
Agree with your sentiments stu, from my understanding the H5N1 virus was first discovered in the late 50's, although thats rarely made clear by the media, I just can't see how constant scaremongering with the imminent threat of death for huge numbers is healthy for anyone.
One thing is for sure, there will be some tasty christmas bonuses going round at roche
I would like to suggest on the subject of HIV however which has "no cure" that there are many people out there who have been diagnosed now for up to 20 years that have never taken any anti retrovirals and continue to be healthy and live with no symptoms whatsoever.
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 2:17 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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Hermanolobo
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Quote: from DaffyDuck on 10:52 am on Oct. 12, 2005
Is anyone surprised? Everyone is taking a "Let's wait and see" attitude, and most third world countries pretend it doesn't exist... until it spreads.
I have no doubt that we will soon have the first cases of the human variant, coming out of places like China (which claims every few weeks to have eradicated it....), North Korea or Vietnam... One thing's for sure, it's on the move.
At the moment the danger is direct contact with the birds or eating contaminated flesh that is not properly cooked.
The fear is mutation and as yet does not appear to have happened. The flu epidemic after the First World War killed more than the war itself. It would not surprise me if there is a cycle to influenza pandemics ?
EU to Speed Approval of Bird Flu Vaccines, Health Official Says
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- European Union officials, dealing with an outbreak of bird flu in Turkey and Romania, plan to speed development of vaccines against the human form of the illness by cutting regulatory reviews from months to weeks.
EU officials have met with drugmakers to discuss ways to more quickly prepare a vaccine against potential pandemic viruses and increase capacity to make treatments, EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said yesterday at a press conference in Brussels.
Bird flu was found in Romania on the eastern border of the European Union this week, and a deadly strain was detected in Turkey, raising concern that the virus that's killed 60 people in Asia is spreading across Europe. While the disease hasn't spread between humans, governments are working with France's Sanofi- Aventis SA and other drugmakers to prepare vaccines.
The commission is working with the European Medicines Agency ``to speed up the process of approving a vaccine in case of a pandemic from the moment the virus is identified to until a vaccine is produced,'' which might take six to eight months, Kyprianou said. ``We want to try to limit that to make it in weeks.''
The EMEA and the drug industry are working to come up with a program to speed the approval process of vaccines in a pandemic emergency, he said.
The agency will review the bulk of an application prior to the actual outbreak of a pandemic, the London-based regulator said in a press release late yesterday. Once the specific strain of the influenza virus is known, a health panel can approve a variation to the application within a few days, it said.
Poultry Import Ban
EU regulators imposed an immediate six-month ban on imports of poultry and live birds from Romania after tests linked the deaths of 40 ducks and a chicken to the disease, the European Commission said today. The move comes a day after EU officials said bird-flu tests appeared to be negative, indicating that the deadly virus wasn't poised to spread into the 25-nation bloc.
The virus, which originated in Southeast Asia, has infected 117 people and killed 60, according to the World Health Organization. The outbreak of bird flu in Europe began in Siberia in July. It first surfaced in Romania last week in Ceamurlia de Jos, a village near the Danube delta, Europe's biggest wetland and hub for migrating birds.
The illness is spread by bodily fluids, like blood and feces, according to Peter Openshaw, section head of respiratory infection at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College in London.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc said last week it will triple its flu- vaccine manufacturing capacity in North American in the next two years, as well as ramp up production of Relenza, a drug that studies suggest may be effective against the H5N1 virus, the form that's linked to the Asian deaths and found in Turkey.
Sanofi Contract
In September, Sanofi won a $100 million contract from the U.S. government to produce a vaccine against bird flu. The French drugmaker will produce bulk concentrate of the vaccine, which the National Institutes of Health is now testing.
So far, the U.S. is the only country with a contract for the Sanofi vaccine, said Alain Bernal, director of communications for the company's vaccines unit, Sanofi Pasteur.
Bernal said it was difficult to estimate how much of its bird- flu vaccine could be produced because it's not yet known how much of a concentration of each dose is needed nor the yield. Sanofi, the world's biggest supplier of flu vaccine, produces about 150 million flu vaccine doses per year, Bernal said.
``If there was a pandemic then we would probably have to stop production of the normal flu vaccine and switch to this,'' he said.
Britain on guard against bird flu
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Thai Girls : Meet Active Thai Girls
Posted on: 3:11 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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Brown Eye
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We have heard that this flu could rapidly spread among humans once it makes the jumps from birds to us. For this reason there has been so much effort at containing it asap among birds with all the massive killings and restrictions on trading and transportation of live birds.
Then how the bird flu from Asia made it to Colombia? Could Colombian drug dealers be using massive amount of messenger pigeons as drug mules?
Quote:
Bird flu found in Colombia - Monday Oct 10 22:27 AEST
The Colombian government said on Monday that a strain of avian influenza of had been found on a chicken farm but represented no health danger.
"Thanks to the vigilant program we are developing in the country to detect bird flu, we were able to detect a strain of the flu of low pathogenicity," Agriculture Secretary Andres Felipe Arias told reporters.
The minister said the discovery was made on a chicken farm in the municipality of Fresno, 200 kilometers south of Bogota in the Tolima region.
The farm has been quarantined and "no animals leave the farm," said Arias.
The minister declined to specify exactly how many birds were affected but said it was "just a few."
"I don't have the exact number, but it was just a few. The important thing is that it's under control, the farm is quarantined and there's not going to be any health problem or with the consumption of our poultry products," he stressed.
The Panamerican Health Organization has warned that avian influenza could strike Colombia during the annual migration through the country of some six million birds.
The H5N1 avian flu virus has mainly been found in 10 Southeast Asian countries and has so far infected 112 people, of whom around 60 have died, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Scientists have warned that millions of people around the world could die if the virus crosses with human flu strains to become a lethal and highly contagious new disease.
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 11:03 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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Gyaos
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How's this flu getting from chicken to chicken, duck to duck, goose to goose? Don't they wear condoms?
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 11:14 am on Oct. 14, 2005
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