Roche will donate another 2 million treatment courses, or 20 million doses, of the antiviral Tamiflu (oseltamivir) to the World Health Organization (WHO). This is addition to previous donations made by Roche in 2004 and in August 2005, and will result in a total of 5.125 million treatment courses being available to the WHO to help people affected by a potential pandemic.

Whilst the donation made last year is stored centrally, these additional 2 million treatment courses will be stored as regional stockpiles in locations to be determined by WHO to serve the needs of developing countries. The regional stockpiles of Tamiflu will be used to reduce morbidity and mortality in the case of an outbreak of avian influenza in humans and prevent the further spread of such an outbreak, in the interest of public health, informs Roche release.

"Roche is working as a collaborative and responsible partner with governments and the WHO to assist in pandemic planning, including the stockpiling of Tamiflu. We are pleased to be able to further increase our donation to the WHO and help establish regional stockpiles of Tamiflu," said William M. Burns, CEO Division Roche Pharma.

"By establishing regional stockpiles of antivirals, developing countries most likely to be affected by avian influenza in humans will be better prepared to rapidly manage outbreaks in the interest of global public health. It is important to emphasize that this and the previous donation do not replace the need for countries to consider the establishment of national antiviral stockpiles as one of a number of measures of national pandemic preparedness consistent with the national priorities of each country," stated Lee Jong-Wook, the Director-General of the World Health Organization.

In contrast to the regional stockpiles of Tamiflu, the rapid response stockpile of 3 million courses of Tamiflu treatment donated by Roche to the WHO in August 2005, will be used exclusively at the site of outbreak of a pandemic in an attempt to contain or slow its spread.

In order to increase the availability of Tamiflu to meet the growing demand as pandemic planning continues, Roche has taken significant steps to increase manufacturing capacity, doubling production capacity in 2004 and 2005 and will have the capacity to produce over 300 million treatments of Tamiflu annually by 2007 - more than a ten fold increase over the capacity in 2004. Roche has established close relationships with 50 external suppliers and the supply chain in place exceeds our current orders from governments, added the release.