Washington is building a stockpile of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu in Asia, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leaviit announced Monday. "Today I'm pleased to announce that the United States government has just deployed treatment courses of Tamiflu to a secure location in Asia," Leavitt told journalists.
"The shipment is currently in transit and it will arrive later this week."
Leavitt, who was in Geneva for the annual assembly of the World Health Organisation (WHO), declined to give details of the number of doses of the drug in the stockpile, nor where it would be stored.
"It is a stockpile that would belong to the United States and we would control its deployment. It would be done in co-operation with other countries," he said.
"We in the United States are doing what is necessary to prepare. We want to be of assistance to the world community as we work together," he added.
Tamiflu is seen as a likely first line of defence against a potential human flu pandemic sparked by avian influenza, which has infected millions of birds world-wide and killed at least 123 people, mostly in Asia, in recent years.
Japan pledged donations to a stockpile of 500,000 courses of the drug set up by the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) earlier this month.
Several dozen governments have been building national stockpiles of the drug as part of wider preparations for a pandemic, while the WHO is also gathering millions of doses for rapid deployment in affected areas.
Scientists fear avian influenza could mutate into a strain easily passed from person to person, triggering a pandemic like the one in 1918-1919 which killed an estimated 50 million people world-wide.