NEWS: Highly priced malaria drugs causing more deaths’

‘Highly priced malaria drugs causing more deaths’

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 from MONITOR ONLINE:

The high cost of anti-malarial drugs has made the poor to become more vulnerable to the deadly disease, a senior consultant at Mulago Hospital, Dr Baterana Byarugaba, has said.

Dr Baterana said pharmacies and other suppliers of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) like coartem should reduce the price of such drugs so as to save lives.

A dose of coartem in private health facilities costs between Shs15,000 and Shs20,000. Chloroquine, which was widely used in the treatment of uncomplicated malaria before it was banned by the World Health Organisation after it became ineffective, was much cheaper compared to ACTs which were introduced as a replacement.

A dose of chloroquine used to cost about Shs200 in private clinics and pharmacies. The accessibility of the drugs saved so many lives but since it become resistant to malaria parasite, those who cannot afford expensive drugs have been left at the mercy of the killer disease.

Currently, the Ministry of Health states that malaria remains the number one cause of ill-health and deaths in the country accounting for about 320 deaths per day. “About 80 per cent of Ugandans buy drugs from pharmacies to treat themselves before going to the hospitals but ACTs continue to be very expensive,” Dr Baterana said.

He revealed this during the launch of a new anti-malarial drug called Arco in Kampala on Thursday. The drug manufactured by Kunming Pharmaceutical Corporation, a Chinese company, targets children from the age of four months to 16 years.

Malaria kills between 70,000 and 110,000 Ugandan children annually. The clinical trials of the new drug were conducted both in China and Mulago.The former manager of the Malaria Control Programme in the Ministry of Health, Dr John Bosco Rwakimari, said availability of effective but affordable drugs would lead to the success of other interventions that the government has put in place to control the spread of malaria such as Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) of mosquitoes.

Dr Rwakimari said in the 1960s, cases of malaria dropped in Busoga, and Kigezi region when the government conducted IRS alongside mass treatment using chloroquine and asprin. Unfortunately, medical experts say, very few people today have access to effective anti-malarials.

Although coartem in government hospitals is given to patients free, the regular stock outs still force those who are stricken by malaria to pay for treatment in private health facilities.Recently, the National Drug Authority arrested several health workers who were engaged in selling coartem which was supposed to be given to patients free of charge.