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Malaria
Key Facts
- Malaria is the single greatest killer of African children, responsible for
more than 1 million deaths each year
- Malaria overwhelms health systems, accounting for as high as 50% of clinic
and hospital visits in some countries
- Sickness and death due to malaria costs Africa an estimated $12 billion
each year in lost productivity
- $5 can buy a bed net that will protect a child from malaria for three years;
$1 can buy drugs that will cure a child with malaria
Problem
Each year, as many as 500 million people around the world fall ill from malaria.
More than one million die, most of them young African children. Medicines derived
from a Chinese plant, so-called ACTs, can fully cure the disease in three days,
but their high cost—10 to 20 times that of older drugs— has allowed
them to reach only a fraction of people in need.
Solution
Building on the approach it has successfully used to increase access to HIV/AIDS
treatment, CHAI has begun to support countries in Africa and around the world
in their efforts to dramatically reduce the burden of malaria. Launched in early
2007, the Foundation’s malaria program is helping scale-up malaria treatment
and prevention in Liberia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. Simultaneously, the program
is pursuing opportunities to secure lower prices for drugs and other essential
tools that will help increase treatment access in countries across the world.
As the program develops, it will expand to support other countries in need.
One example of CHAI's efforts to address malaria treatment involves helping
simplify drug packaging to make it more user-friendly |
Model
- Lowering global price of key commodities – CHAI
has gained a detailed understanding of the production process and markets
for ACT medications. It plans to use approaches such as facilitating regulatory
approval to increase competition and carefully forecasting growing demand,
to reduce prices paid by countries and patients.
- Increasing accessibility and quality of treatment for patients
– More than half of malaria patients in many areas of Africa get treatment
through informal drug shops, where ACTs are currently inaccessible due to
high prices. CHAI is helping to develop and implement a comprehensive approach
to address this issue, including lowering the price of ACTs thirty-fold through
a subsidy, and educating and empowering patients through public campaigns
and improved packaging for the drugs.
- Rapid, ambitious scale-up of proven interventions –
In recent years, some countries have made strong progress in expanding their
malaria control efforts. The Foundation is now helping some of these countries
develop and implement plans to rapidly increase the scale of these efforts
so that the impact of malaria can be dramatically reduced. Through these plans,
the Foundation is supporting expansion of not only treatment, but key approaches
to preventing malaria, including distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets.
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