Good neighbors.

31.Jul.2009

Brazilian citizens come to Artigas to buy Tamiflu

The now famous antiviral Tamiflu, used on patients with H1N11 flu, is not sold in pharmacies in Brazil due to a government decision that seeks to guarantee access to the medicine for patients who actually need it; however some Brazilians have started buying it from neighboring countries.

According to Rodrigo Hilario, the Ministry of Health requested that the manufacturer of the medicine hand over all the stock to the ministry, he said that “the use of the medicine, the only antiviral available for bird flu, which kills 60% of those infected, is restricted in the case of the new flu”. The objective, he added “is to avoid unnecessary use and possible resistance to the medicine, as was the case of UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Denmark and Canada”.

According to AFP journalists, in pharmacies in San Pablo and Rio de Janeiro it’s impossible to get Tamiflu capsules. Roche laboratory, the drug manufacturer, issued a statement in Brazil, explaining that it had turned over “all its production” to the Ministry of Health.

"Stock will be replaced in commercial establishments only after the government’s need is satisfied” expresses the note, which clarifies that the lab had not withdrawn the product from the market, but rather had “not replaced” stock in private pharmacies.

Local press has reported that some centers of attention for people infected with H1N1 flu don’t have access to the medicine.

Quoted by O Estado de Sao Paulo this Thursday, the Director of Epidemiological Surveillance of the Ministry of Health, Eduardo Hage, indicated that the network of health centers with Tamiflu stock will be broadened beyond the hospitals of reference that had up to now concentrated attention to most patients with H1N1 symptoms.

Brazilian authorities have set up, in the past few days, specific points in hospitals and health centers in order to receive people with symptoms of the new virus. However, attention is still slow and patients have to wait several hours before being seen by a Doctor.

Brazil has at least 56 registered deaths from this flu, and more than 1,500 cases according to a compilation based on official data from municipalities, states and the federal government. Some states in Río de Janeiro and San Pablo have extended the vacations of thousands of students and public institutions to try and contain the flu.

Rio Grande do Sul - which has a border with Argentina, second country in number of deaths behind USA — and Uruguay, represents the biggest threat for Brazilian authorities during the extremely cold Southern Cone winter.

Sources have informed AFO in Uruguay that Brazilians are crossing the border to Artigas, and are purchasing Tamiflu. The source went as far as saying that Tamiflu sales had also been detected outside of the pharmacy circuit, and they don’t know where it’s coming from or who produced it.

According to Rodrigo Hilario, spokesperson for the Brazilian Ministry of Health, “there’s a stock of 9 million treatments in the form of raw material (powder), which will be turned into capsules when necessary”.

According to AFO news agency, in this past week the Ministry has received 260,000 treatments (10 capsules each), and by the end of September plans to receive a total of 750,000 doses.