Vietnam bought Tamiflu at very high prices and overstocked on the medication, said the government inspectorate.

According to inspectors, Vietnam recorded only 91 H5N1 patients in 32 provinces from late 2003 to late 2005. However, on November 22 2005, the Ministry of Health requested 30 million pills, the equivalent of 3 million doses for 3 million people.

As the ministry ordered a large quantity of materials to produce Tamiflu within a short period of time, it couldn’t buy materials from Roche, which began providing the materials in August 2006, had a cheaper price, and an expiration date of ten years. The ministry had to buy materials from India for higher prices and an expiration date of only three years.

To choose companies for its plan to produce Tamiflu, the ministry set up an evaluation council, but the council did not fulfill its given mission. It did not negotiate prices with the evaluated firms and did not come to conclusions about each firm. Without the Minister of Health’s approval, this council ordered four of the five evaluated firms to produce Tamiflu.

The Health Ministry did not coordinate with the Finance Ministry to set purchasing prices. The ministry independently ordered several firms to purchase materials to produce Tamiflu, resulting in higher prices.

The Health Ministry reported that four firms paid $12,000 per kilo for materials from India, but these firms had to pay from $17,500-$18,500/kilo.

Inspectors said that the Ministry was irresponsible in helping companies seek sources of materials to produce medicine and failing to check the finances of these companies.

The government paid more than $562 billion dong ($3.5 million) to four companies to produce nearly 20 million Tamiflu pills, but nearly half of the pills were not used and are expired now.

At present, there are over 21 million pills of Tamiflu in the Health Ministry’s warehouses and over 10 million have expired. Of this number, over 9 million pills were produced in Vietnam, which expired in March 2009.

PV