Doctors have questioned the effectiveness and safety of the main drug used to treat pandemic flu
Thomas Moore
Sky News
January 18, 2012
The Department of Health maintains a Tamiflu stockpile to treat around 30 million people, at a cost of around £500m.
But doctors at the Cochrane Collaboration assessed 16,000 pages of clinical trial data and said there were “critical questions about how well the drug works and about its reported safety profile”.
Researcher Dr Carl Heneghan told Sky News: “What you are looking at in any drug is ‘what are the benefits and what are the harms?’.
“Right now, without access to the evidence, we are not in a position to say the benefits clearly outweigh the harms.”
