News - CTV.ca | Resistance to Tamiflu found in bird flu patient

A Vietnamese girl who came down with the H5N1 avian flu strain appears to have shown resistance to the flu treatment Tamiflu.

That's raising worries that Canada's first line of attack, in the case that bird flu leads to a human pandemic, may not be effective.

A team of researchers, led by influenza expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, reports that the 14-year old girl was given the drug in late February yet continued to shed resistant viruses after treatment.

Tamiflu is the brand name for oseltamivir and is thought to be one of only a few available flu treatments effective against the deadly H5N1 strain.

For that reason, many countries have been rushing to stockpile the drug in advance of what many epidemiologists say is an inevitable influenza pandemic. Many are worried that H5N1 could be the strain that leads to a human pandemic

Canada has plans to stockpile just under 16 million pills of Tamiflu, enough to treat 1.6 million people, for the first wave of a mild to moderate pandemic.

CTV.ca Resistance to Tamiflu found in bird flu patient