[afro-nets] Malaria campaigners hopeful on drugs pricing deal

Cross posted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn@cairo.anu.edu.au

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L9420228.htm

Malaria campaigners hopeful on drugs pricing deal
Reuters
By James Mackenzie

PARIS, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Anti-malaria campaigners are confident that a deal can be reached with pharmaceuticals groups to cut the cost of new drugs needed to fight a disease estimated to kill more than 1 million people a year.

Negotiations are being held with several big drugs makers as part of a wider drive to bring the cost of so-called artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) down to the level of the older, but now ineffective, chloroquinine treatments.

"I am very hopeful that this first stage, the negotiations, will produce results,"Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria told reporters in Paris on Tuesday.

The negotiations, part of a programme called the Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm), aim to persuade drugs companies to cut the price of ACTs to all first-time buyers to $1, the price currently charged to public sector buyers. The AMFm would then subsidise wholesalers 95 percent of the cost, enabling them to sell the drugs at prices within reach of people in some of the world's poorest countries who may be living on $1 or $2 a day.

Malaria, a disease spread by mosquito-borne parasites, is contracted by up to 500 million people every year, of whom more than 1 million die, according to figures from the World Health Organisation.

Chloroquinine, one of the former standard treatments for the disease, has become ineffective in many countries as resistance levels have grown.

But its low cost -- around 20 cents a dose compared with $4-5 for ACTs -- makes it far more affordable for people living in poor African, Asian or Latin American countries where the disease is most dangerous.

Kazatchkine said the programme would help drugs companies by increasing the size of the market for ACTs and make it easier to predict demand.

"We are seeing the market a lot more clearly now," he said. "Some firms were complaining that they had produced too much of these medicines. We're hoping an agreement will enable us to regulate the flow better so that everyone benefits."
Swiss drugs maker Novartis <NOVN.VX> and France's Sanofi <SASY.PA<http://sasy.pa/&gt;&gt;
are among the Western companies that make the drug but the sector has been shaken by the arrival of Chinese and Indian companies like Cipla
<CIPL.BO<http://cipl.bo/&gt;&gt; and IPCA Laboratories <IPCA.BO <http://ipca.bo/&gt;&gt;\.

"The more firms there are producing these medicines, the greater the level of competition will be and the more prices will fall," Kazatchkine said. He said a sharp increase in malaria funding over recent years had improved prospects for controlling the disease but said an extra $1 billion a year was needed.

"We have the means to control and combat malaria," he said. "It would be incomprehensible, shocking now that we are so close to being able to reduce it really significantly if we didn't."

--
Vern Weitzel
mailto:vern.weitzel@gmail.com