WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. government said yesterday it will give 420,000 treatment courses of Tamiflu to  the Pan-American Health Organization to help fight the new H1N1  influenza virus in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department said treating  and preventing the virus helps the security of the region, as  well as that of the United States.

HHS has bought 50 million courses of antiviral drugs,  including Roche AG’s <ROG.VX> Tamiflu, known generically as  oseltamivir, and GlaxoSmithKline’s <GSK.L> Relenza, or  zanamivir.

HHS released 11 million treatment courses in April, soon  after swine flu was first detected, and has since bought 13  million more. The new virus, declared a pandemic last month,  now infects more than a million people, according to estimates  from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It has been the confirmed cause of 170 deaths in the United  states and more than 300 globally.