Birdflu scam: Health Ministry bought Tamiflu in December

New Delhi, Mar 14 (UNI) After the bird flu, it's now the time for a bird flu scam.

Animal rights activist and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Maneka Gandhi today accused the government of placing a 12 million dollar-worth order to buy one million capsules of Tamiflu, the human vaccine against bird flu, nearly two months before the disease hit India.

Tamiflu is a drug developed by Gilead Sciences, an American company linked to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Union Health Ministry placed the order in the last week of December with the Hyderabad-based Hetero Drugs, which holds a sub-contract with Roche, the distributor of Tamiflu.

''A pamphlet brought out by Hetero Drugs in December said India will have a birdflu epidemic by January and that is what happened,'' Ms Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha today.

Of the one million drugs it ordered, the government bought 11,000. Each capsule costs one dollar.

According to the BJP leader, it was strange that the government wanted to buy a drug ''that is no good''. ''If it so good as the company says, why it is not on the shelves?'' she asked. ''And it has turned out that nobody in India was infected by the disease.'' The entire deal between the government and Hetero drugs was finalised in a day, Ms Gandhi alleged. ''This is a bigger scam than any arm deal,'' she told UNI.

Mr Rumsfeld was the chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 before he joined the Bush administration. He was also on its board between 1988 and 2001. He remained a major investor in Gilead holding 25 million dollars worth of shares till the end of 2004, according to a disclosure report last week. The Pentagon, however, says Mr Rumsfeld has no relationship with Gilead beyond his investments in the company.

Large stocks of Tamiflu have been ordered by more than 60 countries. The US is said to be spending more than 7 billion dollars to stock the anti-viral drug.

In India, all 200 human blood samples collected from Nawapur, Maharashtra where the birdflu first appeared in February have tested negative for H5N1 strain of birdflu virus.

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