Roche, the huge Swiss multinational drug company recently released a statement saying that the big stockpile of the bird flu drug Tamiflu is ready and that they will follow the instructions of the World Health Organization as to its eventual distribution. This grant of three million Tamiflu treatment courses amounts to over thirty million individual tablets was donated to the WHO by Roche when the first serious concerns about the H5N1 virus started to appear in the Far Eastern countries.

The company Roche was keen not to be seen to be profiting unduly from what could be a worldwide pandemic and catastrophe and so donated the Tamiflu with maximum publicity and exposure. The donation was specifically aimed so that if a part of the world required a quick response to an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu, then the WHO would get there fast with the correct drugs. The agreement even stipulated that Roche would send the Tamiflu to any international airport that the WHO requested.

Tamiflu is considered by most influenza experts to be the safest defence from a bird flu pandemic in humans and by curing people from the H5N1 flu they would resist the spread of it. Tamiflu works by boosting the body natural defence to all flu viruses and can prevent the deadly symptoms of bird flu from being fatal.

Roche as well as the previously mentioned gift of 3 million Tamiflu courses, has also given a further two million to the WHO specifically to be sent to poor countries that can't afford to buy large amounts of the Tamiflu drug for its people and that could be in the firing line should a pandemic break out. Roche has promised this further batch of two million Tamiflu towards the end of 2006 and like the previous donation it will be distributed entirely at the disgression of the World Health Organisation.