Government opts for new malaria drug

Tanzania will in 2006 officially adopt a new combination therapy for the treatment of malaria to replace SP or sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine, a standard first line drug, which is now ineffective against the disease. "Studies conducted in malaria endemic countries by the [UN] World Health Organization [WHO] have established that the drug is no longer effective," Hussein Mwinyi, the assistant minister for health, said on Wednesday at a news conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital. He said the combination therapy known as Artemesinin Combined Treatment (ACT) would replace SP, which the country adopted three years ago to treat malaria after the efficacy of another first line therapy, chloroquine, diminished drastically. However, Mwinyi said ACT, which the WHO has recommended, is expensive and that the government had requested funds from the Global Fund Against Malaria, AIDS and Tuberculosis to procure the new drug. "Luckily, the Fund has provided us with about [US] 50 million dollars for that purpose for three years," he said. He added that WHO had pre-qualified a Danish firm, Novatis, to manufacture the drug and procurement arrangements were under way. The coordinator of the National Malaria Control Programme, Alex Mwita, told a malaria workshop on Tuesday in Tanzania's administrative capital, Dodoma, that ACT had already achieved a high curative rate in other parts of malaria-affected countries and that more combinations in their class were expected. Mwita said evidence from Asia had shown that the combination of Artesunate and Mefloquine had maintained a high curative rate. "It is expected that the use of ACT would lower the mortality and morbidity rates linked to malaria," Mwita said. He said African countries that had already phased out SP in favour of ACT included Burundi and Zambia. Authorities in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar have already cleared ACT for prescription in health centres. Kenya and Uganda are also in the process of moving to ACT. Government records show that between 16 million and 18 million people, over half of the country's population, contract malaria annually, resulting in the deaths of at least 100,000, and that the main victims were pregnant women and children under five. Experts say malaria and poverty are intertwined as the disease, which is treatable, often kills mostly the poor. The disease is transmitted through the bite of the anopheles mosquito. It is estimated that Tanzania loses 3.4 percent of its gross domestic product, estimated at around $10 billion, in direct and indirect costs of malaria. The loss includes cost of preventive interventions, treatment, care of the sick and lost man-hours. Among preventive intervention measures that Tanzania has implemented are the introduction and popularisation of heavily subsidised insecticide-treated mosquito bednets, which are offered to expecting mothers in health centres across the country.