Medical researchers want to recycle 10 million expired Tamiflu tablets
as destroying the tablets would waste both money and the opportunity to
research the recovery of oseltamivir phosphate.
"Oseltamivir
phosphate - an anti-viral drug that slows the spread of influenza - is a
hard-to-produce active element used for production of flu-prevention
medicine," said Professor Nguyen Van Hung, director of the Vietnam
Academy of Science and Technology's pharmaceutical research and
development centre.
"Recycling the expired tablets to
recover the oseltamivir phosphate means that we can ignore the entire
initial process to produce the substance from raw materials."
Hung, who confirmed that Vietnam 's scientists had successfully
explored the recycling, said: "Recovering oseltamivir phosphate from
expired Tamiflu is essential because making the substance from recycled
materials will help save time and money."
The academy's
scientists and the Hanoi University of Pharmacy had produced the
valuable substance from shikimic acid that was extracted from anise in
experiments over the past 30 months.
These had cost 4 billion VND (204,000 USD).
Meanwhile, they have successfully recycled expired Tamiflu over 12 months at a cost of100 million VND (5,100 USD).
"We can keep the oseltamivir phosphate in good condition to make new
batches of Tamiflu to meet any new flu outbreak," said Hung./.
