PHA-Exchange> Experts Meet To Discuss New Malaria Drugs

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 from Dr Rana Jawad Asghar <jawad at alumni.washington.edu> -----

Experts Meet To Discuss New Malaria Drugs
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20040429/449_23307.asp

Public health experts are meeting in New York today to discuss
expanding access in developing nations to artemisinin-
combination therapy (ACT), which offers one of the fastest and
most effective cures for malaria, USA Today reports.

Malaria parasites have become resistant to older drugs, but
funding for the newer ACT remains a problem. ACT costs about
$1.50 for a three-day course, compared with 10 cents for older
drugs such as chloroquine and Fansidar.

Many African governments can devote just $5 per person annually
to public health.

"There's no denying that this will cost more, probably a lot
more," said Ron Waldman of Columbia University's Mailman School
of Public Health, which is sponsoring the meeting along with the
World Health Organization, UNICEF and Medécins Sans Frontières.
"But people now are spending a lot of money on treatments that
don't work."

WHO puts the cost of treating everyone in sub-Saharan Africa an-
nually at $1 billion for malaria drugs alone.

The WHO's global malaria eradication effort made great strides
beginning in the 1950s, succeeding in wiping out the disease in
the United States and Europe. Surging drug resistance and the
phaseout of the pesticide DDT have contributed to malaria's re-
surgence in parts of Africa, however.

Four times as many cases have been reported over the past two
decades as in the previous 20 years, USA Today said, and between
300 million and 500 million cases are recorded each year, 90
percent of them in Africa.

ACT is widely believed to offer a better alternative. The best
evidence of its success, according to the paper, is in South Af-
rica's KwaZulu Natal province, which has seen a 77 percent drop
in malaria cases and a nearly 90 percent decline in deaths since
ACT was introduced there in 2001 (Steve Sternberg, USA Today,
April 29).




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