“Don’t sell ACTs drugs above recommended price” (Graphic Business)

Tuesday, Feb.1, 2011

THE National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) has issued a stern warning to facilities which sell the Global Fund subsidised artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) for the treatment of malaria at exorbitant price to desist from it.
The medicine which has a logo of a green leaf is said to be selling illegally between GH¢10 and GH¢12 instead of the recommended price of between GH¢1 to GH¢1.50p.
Speaking at a media briefing in Accra organised by the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communications Study under it Voices for Malaria Free in Africa Programme, the Programme Manager of the NMCP, Dr (Mrs) Constance Bart-Plange said, the Global Fund was subsidising the cost of the drug under its Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) programme and therefore should not be sold above the recommended price.
The Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) is an innovative financing mechanism designed to expand access to the most effective treatment for malaria, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs).
The AMFm is a new line of business hosted and managed by the Global Fund and financial support for the initiative come from UNITAID, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and other donors. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership will continue in its important role as a partner to the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria.
The AMFm aims to enable countries to increase the provision of affordable ACTs through the public, private and non-governmental organisation (NGO) sectors. This will save lives and reduce the use of less-effective treatments to which malaria parasites are becoming increasingly resistant. It will also reduce the use of artemisinin as a single treatment or mono-therapy, thereby delaying the onset of resistance to that drug and preserving its effectiveness.
To achieve this aim, the Global Fund, as host and manager of the AMFm, has negotiated with drug manufacturers to reduce the price of ACTs, and to require that sales prices must be the same for both public and private sector first-line buyers.
Private importers now pay up to 80 per cent less than they did in 2008 and 2009. The Global Fund pays most of this reduced price (a ‘buyer co-payment’) directly to manufacturers to further lower the cost to eligible first-line buyers of ACTs purchased from manufacturers.
This means that first-line buyers only pay the remainder of the sales price for the ACTs. First-line buyers are expected to pass on the highest possible proportion of this price benefit so that patients are able to buy ACTs across the public, private, not-for-profit and for-profit sectors at prices that are less than those of oral artemisinin mono-therapies.
AMFm Phase 1 is being implemented through nine pilots in eight countries: Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania (including Zanzibar) and Uganda. Following the Global Fund Board’s decisions on successful applications to Phase 1 in November 2009, grant amendments or new grant agreements have been signed with most AMFm Phase 1 countries and implementation has started in several countries. The first co-paid ACTs were delivered to Ghana and Kenya in August 2010.
The WHO Country Advisor on Malaria in Ghana, Dr Felicia Owusu-Antwi at a media briefing said the GPARC plan was to protect Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACTs) as an effective treatment for malaria.
She said ACTs were anti-malarial combination therapy with an artemisinin derivative as a component which act simultaneously and independently with an aim to improve efficacy as well as retard the development of resistance to individual components of the combination.
The plan of the GPARC was to mobilise global and local stakeholders for the containment and ultimate elimination of artemisinin resistance where it has emerged and also for the prevention of it emergence in or spread to new localities.