PHA-Exch> Malaria campaigners hopeful on drugs pricing deal

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at 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/>>
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/>>
and IPCA Laboratories <IPCA.BO <http://ipca.bo/>>.

"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." (For a FACTBOX on malaria, please
double click on [ID:nL9136436])
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