Healthcare workers first in line for medicine if bird flu reaches NZ

If bird flu reaches New Zealand, the doctors and nurses treating patients will likely be early recipients of a scarce medicine regarded as a frontline tool against the illness.

Workers exterminating birds on infected chicken farms might also be treated to prevent them acquiring the virus and spreading it further, a senior public health official said yesterday.

Dr Douglas Lush, the Acting Director of Public Health, said the Health Ministry was at an early stage of investigating options for obtaining supplies of anti-viral drugs for New Zealand.

There is still no vaccine to protect humans against the virus but the World Health Organisation has said that taking an anti-viral medicine may stave off infection.

The anti-influenza drug Tamiflu has been sent to Asian countries. It works for all common strains of human influenza (types A and B) by blocking the action of viral enzymes.

Dr Lush said if an infected traveller was admitted to hospital after contact with poultry overseas "the priority would be to give these medications to the people immediately caring for that case to prevent the transmission of the virus to healthcare workers".

Giving priority to them would also lower the chance of any of them already suffering from ordinary influenza A acting as a site for re-combination of the bird flu to a further, new, human form.

But if the disease entered New Zealand poultry farms, it would also be important to protect people culling or disposing of infected birds.

In the unlikely event of an epidemic with human-to-human infection breaking out here, hospitals would not be able to cope with the very large number of patients. Most patients would have to be cared for at home by friends and family.

- NZPA