 Students are startled as pigeons flap their wings to fly upward at a park in eastern Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap |
By Bae Ji-sook
Concerns are rising over side effect of bird flu drug Tamiflu on teenagers.
Tamiflu is Swiss-based Hoffman-La Roche's antiviral for general influenza A and B but is also used to combat bird flu. However, worries have surfaced about the possibility of the medicine causing mental disorders among teenagers.
With fear of the H5N1 virus sweeping the nation, the government has doubled the quantity of the drug in storage, as it is the most effective treatment against avian influenza.
Whether to prescribe the pills with risks of side-effects such delusions or other disorders is being widely discussed among medical experts.
Although the drug has been the only medicine accredited to be effective against the H5N1 virus strain by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Japanese and Korean governments restricted its being prescribed to teenagers last year.
The Korea Food and Drug Administration announced that the drug should not be prescribed to those between 10 to 19 years old except for emergencies.
According to Roche, there has not been a reported case of side effects here, but the Seoul Shinmun, a local daily, reported that a woman in her 30s said she had nightmares after taking the drug in 2005.
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