UK government doubles pandemic flu drug stockpiles

The UK government has awarded contracts to double emergency supplies of flu drugs to treat everyone who is predicted to fall ill in a pandemic.

The agreements with Roche and GlaxoSmithKline will double antiviral stockpiles, which are expected to be in place by April. The contracts will deliver an additional 7.6m treatment courses of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) (Roche) and 10.6m treatment courses of Relenza (zanamivir) (GlaxoSmithKline). Once the extra capacity is in place, there will be 33.5m treatment courses of antivirals.

Without antiviral treatment, estimates suggest that up to 750,000 people could die in the UK during a pandemic. Antivirals will play a key role in the clinical response, reducing the severity of the illness and the chance that complications such as pneumonia will set in.

There are currently enough drugs for a quarter of the population, but the latest pandemic plan aims to cope with the worst-case scenario of an infection rate that could hit up to 50% of the UK population.

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said: "The UK is already widely recognised as one of the best-prepared countries in the world. The increased flu-drug stockpile means that we should be able to treat everyone who falls ill in a pandemic."

With this new agreement, the UK becomes the second European country, alongside France, to hold a treatment stockpile sufficient to treat half their population.

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers that a new influenza pandemic is inevitable but nobody can predict when and where it will emerge, whom it will affect or how severe it will be.