Over two hundred thousand Tamiflu pills have been made in Thailand. The generic type of the anti bird flu drug oseltamivir was made under government supervsion at factories run by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation. The generic Tamiflu will start to be sold later on in the year. The generic Tamiflu first requires extensive testing and checking to confirm that it is effective. The Health Minister of Thailand said that they will be selling the drug to the Thai people as soon as possible.

The Thai Tamiflu will be known as GPO "A" Flu. It is being tested by more than one organisation to ensure a good bio-equivalence test. Following the lab tests the tablets can then be given to the Food & Drug Administration for licensing. The Health Minister noted that one other advantage of this generic Tamiflu was that it will be considerably cheaper than the imported Tamiflu. It will retail at a price roughly 40% less than the Roche version of Tamiflu.

The drug's supply is to be carefully controlled and so you won't be able to buy it from normal pharmacies. It will be distributed by the government controlled medical centres with the Ministry of Public Health ensuring that no irregular practices take place.

The statistics show that the government is able to manufacture around 1,000,000 generic Tamiflu pills in a time frame of 2 weeks. This would mean that a further one hundred people could be treated in the event of a pandemic hitting Thailand.

The Minister also said that he was pushing for the government to create a larger and more extensive pharmaceutical manufacturing facilty in Thailand. The GPO is aware of the fact that its supply of Tamiflu is still not enough to meet demand for the drug and that they need to ensure that they keep good standards according to International Good Manufacturing Practices Standards which are regulated by the World Health Organization.

The long term plans could even involve Thailand exporting its drugs to other countries that didn't have such production facilities or who needed help.