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Observers perplexed by Roche's cut-price Tamiflu strategy26 March 2006 Pharmaceutical industry observers say they are perplexed by the Swiss giant Roche's cut-price policy for Tamiflu, which is considered a frontline drug against a potential human pandemic sparked by avian influenza. Roche is urging governments to stockpile the antiviral, as experts raise the spectre of the deadly flu pandemics of the past that claimed tens of millions of lives. So far, around 65 governments have placed bulk orders for Tamiflu, but both the financial advantages for Roche and for its customers remain unclear. William Burns, head of Roche's pharma division, said earlier this month that government orders and letters of intent since 2004 and stretching to 2008 totalled about 200 million treatments. He announced that Roche would raise its production capacity to 400 million treatments a year by the end of 2006 and urged governments to take advantage of that increase if they want to be ready for a pandemic. Tamiflu is one of Roche's seven "blockbuster" drugs, which each bring in more than one billion Swiss francs (634.0 million euros, 764.0 million dollars) a year. Worldwide sales of Tamiflu in 2005 reached 1.6 billion Swiss francs (1.03 billion euros, 1.22 billion dollars), some 370 percent higher in local currencies than the 2004 figure. But Karl-Heinz Koch, a pharma analyst at the Swiss investment bank Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, said: "I think that the general impression that we got from the results (in 2005) was that profitability on Tamiflu was much lower than expected. Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060326/hl_afp |
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