Tamiflu at your neighbourhood chemist? Not yet

The government seems to be in no hurry to allow retail sale of swine flu drug oseltamivir.
Though some reports last week said the government plans to allow sale of oseltamivir in select stores by the second week of September, drug makers and chemists alike are clueless so far on the timeline.

“No decision pertaining to the date for allowing retail sale has yet been taken and the various modalities are being looked into,” the media officer of the Union health ministry told DNA.

Officials of Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma and Mumbai-based Cipla said they were yet to receive any official communication on allowing retail sales of the drug.

Gurgaon-based Ranbaxy Laboratories too said it had nothing official so far, though Ramesh Adige, president, believes his company can provide close to a million capsules of oseltamivir.

Prasad Danave, general secretary of the Retail & Dispensing Chemist’s Association, said while there is no official communication from either state or central authorities, some drug makers have been making enquiries about outlets that have a schedule X licence, which would be necessary to be able to stock and sell oseltamivir whenever retail sale is permitted.

Currently, oseltamivir is the only available weapon against the novel H1N1 virus, since zanamivir, the other known swine flu drug, is yet to be considered by the government as it has to be inhaled and cannot be given to children below five years. The government has so far not allowed retail sale of the drug for fear there would be black marketing, illegal hoarding and indiscriminate usage. However, with the rise in the number of reported cases and deaths, retail sale is under consideration.

But, whenever oseltamivir is allowed in the open market, its sale would be restricted to only chemists having a Schedule X licence, and that too, against three prescriptions from a doctor —- one prescription would be stamped and returned to the buyer, another would be given to the distributor and the third would be kept by the retail chemist for the record of the state food and drug administration.

Schedule X applies to narcotics and is crucial for monitoring supply and sale.

At present, just 300 out of approximately 600,000 chemists in the country have a Schedule X licence, which drug makers feel is far too small a number to be of help.

The government has been sourcing oseltamivir from Swiss drug maker Roche (brand name Tamiflu) through its Hyderabad based licensee Hetero Drugs at Rs 275 per strip of 10 tables and supplying it to government hospitals and a few private hospitals.

A Natco official said the company is looking at a retail price of Rs 330-350 per strip of 10 tablets.

Cipla, on its part, is yet to decide on the price. “A few years ago, our price for a strip of 10 tablets of oseltamivir was Rs 1,000. We will decide the new price at an appropriate date,” a Cipla official said.