Economic Access to Effective Drugs for Falciparum Malaria

The increasing death toll from drug-resistant falciparum malaria is cause for international concern. In 2002, the US Agency for International Development commissioned the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to recommend global actions to ensure the broadest possible access to new, effective antimalarial treatments. In a report issued in 2004, the IOM Committee on Economics of Antimalarial Drugs recommended a global subsidy of 300 million dollars to 500 million dollars per year to replace increasingly ineffective drugs with coformulated artemisinin combination treatments to be distributed through public and private channels in affected areas. This approach allows the existing market to support the switch to new drugs and keeps treatment costs for consumers at levels similar to the current price of chloroquine. The leverage of an international subsidy of combination therapy can also discourage the distribution of monotherapies (such as solo artemisinins), the use of which might foster increasing resistance to antimalarial drugs in the future.