Submitted by: Oliver Sabot, Director of Malaria Control Team

As you drive through the streets of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, the hope is palpable. Every other house is still ruined and covered in bullet holes, but there are construction projects everywhere and the streets are filled with energetic people. Liberians are enthusiastically embracing the opportunity to build a better future for their country.

Liberia bears a heavy burden of malaria as it strives to overcome decades of war. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country (and hundreds of millions across the continent) every year come down with chills and fever and visit their local shop or clinic for treatment. But rather than a cold or the flu, they have potentially deadly malaria. And, for most of them, the drugs that they will receive are no longer effective, failing to cure the malaria infection more than half the time in some areas. It is like flipping a coin to decide your fate or that of your child – unthinkable odds for those of us living in the US and Europe.

But there is a simple solution: ACTs are new drugs which will fully cure a child of malaria with just six pill and three days. But since they are more difficult to produce, these drugs have cost 10-20 times more than the older, ineffective varieties. As a result, many governments have been unable to afford enough ACTs to supply their hospitals and clinics while patients visiting private shops have found that they have to pay five times more than they earn in a day for the new drug.

Today President Clinton will announce CHAI’s effort that will help provide effective treatment to tens of thousands more people in Liberia. CHAI has signed agreements with key manufacturers that will reduce the price of the ACT used by Liberia and other West African countries by 30%. That will mean that the limited funding available – and in a post-conflict country like Liberia there is never enough resources – can provide drugs to roughly one-third more patients. As a result, more mothers will know the relief and joy when their children are fully cured of their deadly infection.

Last year, President Clinton announced a new, comprehensive model CHAI had developed to tackle one aspect of this challenge to a crowd of more than 8,000 people in rural Tanzania. That approach has already begun to show remarkable results: the price of ACTs in rural shops has fallen from $10 to an affordable $0.50 and two-thirds of young children are now accessing the drugs compared to none previously. It is now being scaled up across the country and will reach roughly 6 million additional people with effective treatment every year.

This year, President Clinton has given the people of Liberia more reason to be hopeful by giving them more access to tools to save their children and at last drive back a disease that has hindered potential for centuries.