The State may not have sufficient supplies of a scarce anti-viral drug to treat all frontline staff if there is an expected flu pandemic.
The Department of Health has confirmed that current emergency stocks of the drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) are adequate to treat just 45,000 adults should a new and highly virulent strain of avian flu emerge from south-east Asia.
International experts who addressed a conference in University College Dublin this week agreed that frontline and emergency staff must be first for treatment with the drug in the event of an outbreak.
Because the preparation of a vaccine to combat avian flu would take five months, the only pharmacological intervention available to stop the rapid spread of infection is the anti-viral drug oseltamivir.
While the Department said it had been agreed in principle to buy further stocks of anti-virals, it could not say how many additional doses would be bought or when a purchase tender would be initiated.
Nor could it confirm what percentage of the €9 million budget for influenza pandemic planning announced by the Minister for Health this week would go towards buying the drug.
"The allocation of funds for the stockpiling of antivirus will depend on the recommendations of the influenza pandemic expert group," a spokesman said.
The pharmaceutical firm Roche, based in Switzerland, manufactures Tamiflu. It has a limited production capacity, and there is already a time lag between the placing of large orders for the drug and their delivery.
A Roche spokesman said yesterday it was "in advanced negotiations with most EU states" which urgently sought additional supplies.
He declined to comment on what stage negotiations with the Department of Health here had reached, but said: "It would not be for us to indicate the quantities or indeed the proportion of the population to be covered [ by the drug]."
The World Health Organisation has said it will not issue specific guidelines on the amount of anti-viral drugs each state should stockpile. But it is understood that France has ordered significant supplies to treat up to 25 per cent of its population.
Sources have confirmed that Australia has ordered 100 million doses of the antiviral drug for a population of around 20 million people.
At this week's conference Dr David Bell of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said: "Countries must stockpile antivirus and have a plan to deal with the next flu pandemic".
Prof William Powderley, Professor of Medicine at University College Dublin and consultant in infectious disease at the Mater Hospital, said in relation to an outbreak of avian flu: "The only effective strategy is an anti-viral one. If there is a flu pandemic and we do not have the drugs in advance we will not be able to get them."
The WHO has warned that an avian flu pandemic could cause up to seven million deaths worldwide. It is estimated that up to 800,000 people in the Republic could be infected.