£650m for anti-bird flu drugs ‘cash down drain’

THE £653million spent on drugs to stave off a flu pandemic was ‘money thrown down the drain’, a damning report found yesterday.

The drugs – Tamiflu and Relenza – were stockpiled at huge cost by health chiefs in the hope they could stem the effects of a pandemic.

The mass purchase was triggered in 2005 when Government scientists warned that as many as 700,000 Britons could die from deadly bird flu.

After millions of doses were stockpiled, spending on the drugs escalated still further with the outbreak of swine flu (H1N1 virus) in 2009, the first pandemic in 40 years. The anti-viral medicines were purchased to cut hospital admissions and complications such as pneumonia.

But the drugs work no better than remedies such as paracetamol, according to an analysis by researchers. There are also claims that vital information from clinical trials was withheld from regulators, researchers and doctors.

The report, which analysed data from published and unpublished trials, concludes there is no evidence to show that the drugs reduce hospital admissions or complications. It also says the two drugs do shorten the symptoms of flu but only by half a day – about the same as some over-the-counter drugs.

The review by Cochrane, an international network of researchers, also found Tamiflu had side effects including a higher risk of psychiatric and kidney symptoms.

The authors of the report, published in

‘Worked no better than paracetamol’

the British Medical Journal (BMJ), called for an immediate end to stockpiling of the drugs on the basis of the evidence.

Dr Carl Heneghan, professor of evidencebased medicine at Oxford University, said: ‘The money spent has been thrown down the drain. There is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic.’

A second author, clinical epidemiologist, Dr Tom Jefferson said: ‘The evidence doesn’t justify stockpiling – we should stop it.’

The investigators said there had been ‘multi-system failure’ which included the role of regulators, the European Medicines Agency – which licensed the drug in Europe – and drugs watchdog Nice.

Investigators from Cochrane say the original evidence the drug companies gave to the Government was incomplete. They used a huge amount of data only made available by manufacturers Roche and GlaxoSmithKline after ‘years of struggles’, said BMJ editor-in-chief Dr Fiona Godlee.

The findings, based on 46 trials involving more than 24,000 people, cast doubt whether the drugs are worthwhile in fighting flu.

Roche said it ‘fundamentally disagreed’ with the findings.

The Department of Health said it would ‘consider the Cochrane review closely’.