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 center.
"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 Vietnamese 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 VND4 billion (US$204,000).
Meanwhile, they have successfully recycled expired Tamiflu over 12 months at a cost of VND100 million ($5,100).
"We can keep the oseltamivir phosphate in good condition to make new batches of Tamiflu to meet any new flu outbreak," said Hung.
