Donors ready to subsidise new malaria drug Published: December 26 2005 22:22 | Last updated: December 26 2005 22:22 International organisations are backing a pioneering subsidy programme that could make a new generation of malaria medicines affordable around the world from the start of 2007. The World Bank is developing proposals with Roll Back Malaria, a partnership that includes Unicef, the World Health Organisation and western and developing nations, for a mechanism to underwrite widespread use of artemisinin combination therapy (ACT). Through a “high level global subsidy” of at least $100m a year from aid donors, officials believe they can make significant progress in stimulating competition among producers of ACTs and reduce the price to that of far inferior medicines such as chloroquine. Olusoji Adeyi, who is leading the project for the World Bank, said: “The concept is so clear, the real bottleneck is money.” The move would mark an important boost to flagging efforts to tackle malaria, one of the world’s leading killer diseases which claims more than a million lives a year and is on the rise at a time of growing drug resistance. The World Bank has prepared a proposal seeking $2.5m over nine months from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to finalise how the subsidy would work. The aim is to work within an existing organisation, providing funding to a procurer such as Unicef, creating a market for drugs companies interested in manufacturing ACTs. The initiative builds on recommendations made in 2004 by the US Institute of Medicine in a group chaired by the Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow to work alongside existing competitive drug distribution systems to establish a “high level subsidy” as the only way to make ACTs widely affordable, particularly in Africa. Novartis, the Swiss drug group, has developed the first ACT recommended by the World Health Organisation, known as Coartem, and has attempted to offer it at cost to developing nations. Yet at $2.50 per adult treatment, it is still 10-20 times more expensive than other malaria drugs. The company has long complained that orders for Coartem – currently placed country by country – are well below estimates of demand, making it reluctant to invest too much in scaling up production and building new factories. Sanofi aventis of France is close to launching a different ACT, but activists have called for competition from generic manufacturers to bring down prices further. Prof Arrow conceded that the subsidy mechanism would have to ensure that its benefits were passed on from manufacturers to patients, and that it would need to be maintained over many years. “The programme will encourage producers but the problem is consumers. Africa’s going to have to become a lot richer before the subsidy is no longer required.” A World Bank study last summer estimated that even a relatively small subsidy injected rapidly would save many lives and slow the development of drug-resistant malaria. By Andrew Jack in London ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤