NEW YORK, 27 April 2009 (IRIN) - GLOBAL: Public/private partnerships play vital role in fight against malaria NEW YORK

World Malaria Day on 25 April highlighted the vital importance of partnerships between the UN, governments, the private sector and civil society in fighting a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds.

"Public/private partnerships can really make a difference," Amir Dossal, executive director of the UN Office for Partnerships, told IRIN, after attending meetings to mark the day. "The more people know of these public/private partnerships, the more opportunities they'll get and they might even think of becoming partners in such efforts," he added.

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a non-profit public-private partnership established as a foundation in Switzerland in 1999. MMV, with Novartis, introduced the first Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) for children, Coartem Dispersible, earlier this year. "It's a three-day treatment, it's sweet-tasting, it's cherry-flavoured," said MMV vice-president, corporate development, Antony Kalm, who attended the meetings in Washington and at UN headquarters in New Yorak.

Bitter taste

"One of the biggest problems ... for doctors was that the existing medicine was quite bitter and difficult to swallow, so the children would often spit [it] out ... and ... die.

"Now, children like it, want to take it, they finish the entire six tablets over three days," he told IRIN, noting that the cost for children under 5kg is 37 cents for the entire course, and for children over 5kg, 80 cents.

"Novartis, as part of their agreement with us, have agreed to make zero profit on it. Some 20 countries have already placed orders for the drug; we know that orders number in the tens of millions, so the drug has the potential to save literally millions of children's lives."

Resistance

Malaria kills an estimated one million people annually, mostly children in Africa, and affects more than 50 million pregnant women every year. Up to 250 million clinical cases of malaria are reported annually worldwide.

The mosquito-borne parasite has become resistant to many traditional drugs, which is why ACT, based on a Chinese remedy made from sweet wormwood, is so important - although there are signs of resistance building http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83648 to it as well.

"MMV has a pipeline of drugs because we know that the parasite can outsmart the drug after a while, as we've seen with the previous generation," Kalm said. "So we actually have 50 different drugs in the pipeline at different stages. Our objective is to get all of our drugs out of our pipeline and successfully and affordably to all those [who] need them."

Coartem Dispersible is just one of the weapons in an arsenal that also includes insecticide-treated bed nets, which were highlighted at the meetings.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported that nearly 300,000 malaria deaths had been averted and 17.5 million people better protected against malaria since 2002 thanks to net distributions by its national members.

Price cuts

Roll Back Malaria, a partnership of more than 500 members, announced that an initiative to lower the price of ACTs - the Affordable Medicines Facility - would be rolled out in 11 countries this year.

The programme will cut the cost of ACTs, through a "co-payment" by the Global Fund directly to manufacturers on behalf of buyers, to US5 cents per course of ACTs.

It also reaffirmed the goal of achieving universal coverage with control tools by the end of 2010, and of reaching near-zero deaths by 2015, a goal endorsed by the United States at a meeting in Washington on Friday that launched a partnership between African and US faith leaders, policymakers and global health experts.

Some experts and civil partners on the frontline caution against overly optimistic predictions about the demise of malaria. "Each year there are new commitments that have some kind of measure assigned," Kalm said, noting that the Gates Foundation in 2007 used "the e-word of eradication" for the first time since the 1950s.

"We say in our lifetime and we are comfortable in saying that. Now, of course, you don't know the age of the person you're speaking to. I guess what we'd say is in a generation or two."

ma/mw

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