[Ip-health] Clinton Foundation subsidizes malaria drugs in Africa

[Philip Coticelli]

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Does anyone have more information on this initiative?

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=3DhealthNews&storyID=3D=
2007-07-22T112544Z_01_L22388983_RTRUKOC_0_US-MALARIA-CLINTON.xml&pageNumber=
=3D0&imageid=3D&cap=3D&sz=3D13&WTModLoc=3DNewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

Clinton pilots subsidized malaria drugs in Africa
Sun Jul 22, 2007 7:25am ET
By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is launching a progra=
m
to make subsidized malaria drugs available in Tanzania in a test scheme tha=
t
could serve as a blueprint for Africa as a whole.

The project, to be announced later on Sunday in Dar es Salaam, will make
life-saving ACT drugs available at 90 percent less than the current market
price to a national drug wholesaler, which will then distribute them to
rural shops.

Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, kills up to 3 million
people a year worldwide and makes 300 million seriously ill. Ninety percent
of deaths are in Africa south of the Sahara, mostly among young children.

Many of those lives could be saved with modern artemisinin combination
therapy (ACT) drugs, which are far more effective than older treatments suc=
h
as chloroquine. But a price of up to $8 to $10 per treatment puts them out
of reach for many people.

Although drugmakers including Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis SA have reduced
the cost of ACT medicines to around $1 when they are used in the public
sector, the majority of Africans buy their medicine privately.

In the case of Tanzania, around half of patients with malaria seek treatmen=
t
through private drug shops instead of public health facilities, and most ar=
e
unable to afford ACTs. Instead, they usually buy older drugs that are 20 to
30 times cheaper but are often ineffective due to drug resistance.

The pilot programme by the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative is
designed to test the practicality of subsidizing ACT drugs as a way to
increase their use, a foundation spokesman said.

ACT treatments are derived from a medicinal Chinese plant and are costly to
manufacture.

International organizations and governments, including those form the
Netherlands and Britain, are currently considering a multimillion-dollar
global subsidy plan for ACT medicines.

Awa Marie Coll-Seck, executive director of the U.N.-backed Roll Back Malari=
a
Partnership, told reporters in London earlier this year she hoped a $300
million global scheme could be introduced as early as 2008.

Clinton, who is on a four-nation African tour of South Africa, Malawi,
Zambia and Tanzania, met Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa on Saturday.

He said his foundation would provide support for skills training for medica=
l
personnel in that country to honor Zambia for its impressive AIDS fight.

The former U.S president said his Clinton Foundation and UNITAIDS, a global
anti-AIDS group, had agreed a deal with pharmaceutical firms to reduce
prices of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for poorer nations.

Prices of ARVs for poor nations will be in the region of $25 to $60 per
person per year from about $200 per annually.

In Malawi, Clinton inspected a $70 million modern 80-bed hospital under
construction in Neno, one the country's poorest districts 75 miles south of
the commercial city of Blantyre.

The hospital will completed in March next year and Clinton promised to
officially open it.
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