Roche confirms ability to supply pandemic Tamiflu to Taiwanese
Roche has confirmed its ability to supply pandemic Tamiflu to the people of Taiwan. The announcement comes after the Taiwanese Government reported it would issue a compulsory license for use if Roche could not meet the requested delivery timelines for the pandemic order.
Roche has confirmed its ability to supply pandemic Tamiflu to the people of Taiwan. The announcement comes after the Taiwanese Government reported it would issue a compulsory license for use if Roche could not meet the requested delivery timelines for the pandemic order.
Roche said that a fallback on a compulsory license will be unnecessary as agreed delivery timelines will be met, and it had received the announcement by the Taiwanese Government with surprise.
'We are confident that we will be in a position to deliver the quantities of Tamiflu requested by the Taiwanese Government in the required timelines. Therefore, the possibility of a compulsory license being invoked is unnecessary', said David Reddy, Roche Pandemic Task Force Leader.
Roche met with the Taiwanese Government earlier this week confirmed it will provide an additional 1.3 million treatments of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) to Taiwan next year, taking the total treatments of Tamiflu ordered for pandemic use in the country to 2.3m treatments.
Its ability to meet these needs has been made possible due to a global scale-up effort that has been underway at Roche since 2004, resulting in a production output by the end of 2006 of 300m treatments a year.
In a recent visit to Taiwan, Roche had reviewed the manufacturing capabilities of a local company with a view to issuing a voluntary license to produce Tamiflu for local pandemic use, but says the local company could not produce the drug more rapidly or at lower cost than Roche.
Roche is looking to identify companies that can contribute to manufacturing scale-up to increase global availability for pandemic use without negatively affecting its own production capability. These are companies that can contribute to critical manufacturing steps such as bio-fermentation, azide chemistry, and combined alcohol granulation/capsule filling or contract manufacturers.
Tamiflu is designed to be active against all clinically relevant influenza viruses and key international research groups have demonstrated, using animal models of influenza, that it is effective against the avian H5N1 strain circulating in the Far East.