Doctors are suggesting that Tamiflu be sold widely so that people can treat themselves at home, but the health ministry is concerned about the flu virus developing resistance to the drug.

His institute and several hospitals in Hanoi are grouping patients from different faculties together to have more space for swine flu patients, Kinh said.

He said most of the flu in-patients, especially light cases, want to be treated from home but a current regulation only allows Tamiflu to be administered at medical centers and to hospitalized patients.

Kinh said Tamiflu should be sold at commune or ward drugstores so that people can treat themselves at home under the supervision of local medical officials.

Nguyen Hong Hanh, deputy head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, agreed, saying “rapid response teams” should be set up to take care of cases at home.

Hanh said treatment at home will not only “lift the heavy burden from hospitals” but also prevent infection spreading between people visiting hospitals for examination.

However Trinh Quan Huan, deputy minister of Health, said allowing Tamiflu to be used widely can lead to the virus developing drug resistance as is happening in around 15 countries.

Huan said no country has allowed such usage of Tamiflu and the World Health Organization doesn’t recommend it either.

“If the medicine is distributed widely among the community, no one can manage to make sure if people are using it exactly as prescribed.

“When some people develop resistance to the medicine, we will have no weapon left to fight swine flu.”

He asked experts in the field to discuss the issue and find out measures that avoid the risk of causing resistance to Tamiflu.

The deputy minister also advised people to think of swine flu immediately when they’ve got flu symptoms so that the treatment will not be delayed.

Swine flu has infected more than 10,568 people in Vietnam, killing 36 including nine pregnant women and 20 others who also had other chronic diseases, according to reports by the Ministry of Health on Thursday.

Recent swine flu deaths have been mostly of pregnant women and children, who now account for around 30 percent of the hospitalized patients.

Source: Thanh Nien