[Si même MSF ne fait plus ses communiqués en français, où và-t-on ?
Qui peut nous aider à traduire des documents pour e med ? CB]
New Malaria Drug Subsidy Fails to Ensure Patients Receive Best Treatment
Options
http://www.msfaccess.org/media-room/press-releases/press-release-detail/?tx_
ttnews[tt_news]=1541&cHash=debb3fe73d
08 April 2009
Geneva 8 April 2009 A global malaria drug subsidy to be launched this
month is failing to look at medical needs and is jeopardising the future of
the most effective malaria treatments that exist today, says international
medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm) will massively
subsidise the price of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), the
most effective malaria treatments that exist today. The scheme seeks to
reduce the price of ACTs sufficiently to drive older, ineffective treatments
that are still being purchased because they are considerably cheaper, out of
the market.
The AMFm has potential to save lives and at the same time to make sure that
ACTs stay effective for as long as possible, by ensuring that patients only
have access to the best treatment options, said Dr. Tido von
Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSFs Campaign for Access to Essential
Medicines. But the guidance issued for purchasing the malaria treatments
that the scheme will subsidise is failing to make sure that happens.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which hosts the
AMFm, has stopped short of saying that it will exclusively purchase
fixed-dose combinations (FDCs), where several drugs that need to be taken
together are combined into a single pill. FDCs lead to better patient
adherence and reduce the risk of drug resistance. The key anti-malarials
needed in Africa are available in these easy-to-use combinations from
several producers and meet WHO quality standards. FDCs from more producers
are expected to meet these standards in the coming year.
But by authorising the purchase of co-blisters, where drugs are packaged
together but not combined in the same pill, the Global Fund is running the
risk that patients take only one of the drugs, which greatly increases the
risk of resistance developing.
Chloroquine, previously the main drug used to treat malaria, is now
ineffective because the parasite has grown resistant to it, said Dr. von
Schoen-Angerer. We have to prevent that happening to ACTs, because if
resistance develops, there is no back up treatment option.
MSF is now calling on the Global Fund and the international organisations
supporting the AMFm to revise the purchasing rules in order to prevent the
risk of resistance developing to ACTs.
It is feasible to rely on FDCs alone, and keep co-blisters as a back up but
for a limited time only, after which they should no longer be bought with
donor support, said Dr. von Schoen-Angerer. The purchasing policy of the
malaria subsidy needs to be changed now before the initiative is officially
launched there is just no excuse not to do so.
For more information, please contact:
Guillaume Bonnet, +41 79 203 13 02