E-DRUG: New reports from ACTwatch
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Rapid assessments of the private sector antimalarial supply chain in Benin, Nigeria and Cambodia
At present, about half of all treatment seeking for fever in sub-Saharan Africa takes place in the private sector. Scaling up access to effective, high quality antimalarial drugs therefore needs to address the question of how to make first line treatment - Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) - more affordable in the private sector.
Three new reports present the findings of rapid assessments of the private sector supply chain for antimalarial drugs in Benin, Nigeria and Cambodia. Each of these countries have successfully applied for the first phase of the Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm), a new financing mechanism for antimalarial drugs which aims to significantly reduce the price of ACTs by offering a co-payment for ACTs purchased by eligible buyers. The reports seek to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the supply chains in each country, and to describe how the private sector would respond to subsidised ACTs.
The reports are written by researchers from ACTwatch - a collaboration between Population Services International and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which aims to provide evidence-based recommendations for policymakers on how to increase the availability of quality-assured ACTs for treatment of malaria.
Download the reports from the CREHS website: http://www.crehs.lshtm.ac.uk/scaling%20up.html
More information about ACT watch: http://www.actwatch.info/results/overview.asp
Rebecca Wolfe
Consortium for Research on Equitable Health Systems
<Rebecca.Wolfe@lshtm.ac.uk>
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