Setting an example: Some doctors in Canada are admitting to hoarding Tamiflu. “Some physicians — who expect to be on the front line treating patients with the disease — have amassed pills to be taken as a prophylaxis, to prevent the disease.

One of them is Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, who will be at the forefront of an avian flu pandemic.

Dr. Low, who is also the medical director of the Ontario Public Health Lab, said he paid for 100 pills out of his own pocket, even though the capsules are covered under most private health plans.

‘I thought about this a couple of years ago and I kept saying, ‘I’m going to do this,’ . . . and finally I did it,’ Dr. Low said yesterday.”