# 3639
A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months. - Henny Youngman
Okay, maybe it’s not quite the same thing . . .
But with the world facing an H1N1 pandemic, and tens of millions of courses of Tamiflu nearing their expiration dates, the WHO has issued a bit of a reprieve:
Governments can tack on a couple of extra years to the shelf life of the drug for the treatment of pandemic flu.
And this actually makes sense. There is nothing magical about the 5 year shelf life stamped on the package.
Reports are that Oseltamivir degrades very slowly, and assuming the drug has been stored properly, it is very likely that 5-year-old Tamiflu retains most of its potency.
This report from the AP.
WHO says anti-swine flu drug gets an extra 2 years of storage time
ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Associated Press Writer
1:43 p.m. EDT, August 18, 2009
GENEVA (AP) — Health officials have told governments they can keep Tamiflu for longer to help fight the swine flu pandemic.
It means stockpiles of the drug that governments started to build up five years ago in response to the outbreak of bird flu will not need to be thrown away before winter in the Northern Hemisphere, when the pandemic is expected to spread.
Some 220 million individual treatments of Tamiflu — each with 10 capsules to be taken over five days — have been sent to governments around the world since 2004 by the manufacturer, Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche Holding AG, said spokeswoman Claudia Schmitt on Tuesday.
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