Swiss drugmaker Roche announced on Tuesday that it will donate another 20 million doses of anti- influenza drug Tamiflu to the World Health Organization (WHO) to help curb the spread of bird flu.

This is in addition to previous donations made by Roche in 2004 and in August 2005, and will result in a total of 51.25 million doses being available to the WHO to help people affected by the potential pandemic.

"Roche is working as a collaborative and responsible partner with governments and the WHO to assist in pandemic planning, including the stockpiling of Tamiflu," William M. Burns, an official of the company, told reporters.

"We are pleased to be able to further increase our donation to the WHO and help establish regional stockpiles of Tamiflu", he added.

While the donation made last year is stored centrally, these additional 20 million doses will be stored as regional stockpiles in locations to be determined by the WHO to serve the needs of developing countries.

The regional stockpiles of Tamiflu will be used to reduce morbidity and mortality in the case of an outbreak of bird flu in humans and prevent the further spread of such an outbreak.

Tamiflu is considered the most effective treatment available to counter H5N1 bird flu. The medicine was invented by U.S.-based Gilead and licensed to Roche in 1996.

Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland, now has exclusive world- wide rights for the manufacturing and marketing of the medicine.

Source: Xinhua