Indonesia says will make anti-viral drug Tamiflu

By Karima Anjani

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia will go ahead and make the
anti-viral drug Tamiflu to build up stocks in preparation for
more human cases of deadly bird flu, Health Minister Siti
Fadillah Supari said on Friday.

While she told reporters that Roche AG had given Jakarta
permission to make the drug, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant
said it did not have a patent for the medication in Indonesia.

“We have informed Indonesia that we do not have a patent
(in Indonesia) so they are free to produce it for local
markets,” a spokeswoman for Roche in Basel said. “If they want
to produce they can go ahead. There is no need for them to get
a license.”

Supari said Indonesia was in the process of obtaining the
raw materials from Korea, but she gave no details.

Patents for Tamiflu in major markets are held by Gilead
Sciences Inc, while Roche Holding AG holds a development and
licensing agreement.

Indonesia has said its stocks of anti-viral drugs to treat
H5N1 avian influenza were way short of what was needed.

Officials have given conflicting numbers on stocks, but the
president has said he wants enough medication to treat 11
percent of the country’s 220 million people.

Indonesia has recorded seven confirmed human deaths from
the H5N1 avian virus since July.

Many countries in Asia have been stockpiling anti-viral
drugs such as Tamiflu or Relenza, which is made by
GlaxoSmithKline,, or have said they would make it themselves in
the event of a pandemic.

“NOT LIKE MAKING ICE-CREAM”

I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of disease control at the
Health Ministry, said no local firms had been appointed to make
Tamiflu. “In their letter (Roche) said the Indonesian
government is free to manufacture Tamiflu at its discretion and
without paying compensation for intellectual property rights to
Roche,” he said. “(But) it is not as simple as making an ice
cream.”

Earlier, Jakarta said hundreds of chickens had died of bird
flu in Indonesia’s Aceh in recent weeks, the first cases
detected in the tsunami-hit province.

Syamsul Bahri, director of Animal Health at the Agriculture
Ministry, said the outbreak surfaced among backyard chickens in
three areas largely spared from the December 26 tsunami that
left 170,000 people dead or missing.

There had been no suspected human cases in Aceh, he said.

Bahri said the outbreaks had not been detected in or near
tented camps and barracks where hundreds of thousands of
survivors of the tsunami disaster are still living.

Millions of chickens and other birds in Indonesia have died
from the disease or been killed to prevent its spread since
bird flu was first detected in fowl in the world’s
fourth-most-populous country in 2003. The virus has been
detected among poultry in two-thirds of Indonesia’s 33
provinces.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form which
can pass easily among humans and trigger a global pandemic that
could kill millions.

(Additional reporting by Tomi Soetjipto in Jakarta and Tom
Armitage in Zurich)