Why Fighting Malaria is Hard
A new post on the malaria matters blog illustrates the challenges of providing, and protecting, effective malaria treatment in the developing world.
It discusses:
Regulating drug import to prevent fakes "Fake products were produced in China but labelled "Made in India," according to NAFDAC. Their lab tests showed that these supposed sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) products lacked the pyrimethamine."
Patient demand for inappropriate treatment "The fact that people are still demanding SP products for treatment shows lack of success in educating providers and consumers about the correct medicines..."
Poorly trained pharmacy staff, and unregistered pharmacies "patent medicine vendors (OMV) do need more education on the products that they sell - especially a full orientation on the current national malaria drug policies. They continue to sell the more of the old first-line drugs, chloroquine and SP..."
and
Bad medicines for kids "in an effort to comfort parents whose infants are experiencing what they perceive as ‘teething problems', makers of commercially sold teething mixtures will include ‘very low doses of anti-malaria, especially those produced here in Nigeria or in the tropics...malaria is not treated or prevented that way in children.' Since these mixtures may not be registered to treat disease, they may not be adequately regulated - and not surprisingly have led to the deaths of many children recently."
They offer us a glimmer of hope at the end. "Nigeria is among the first applicants to the new Affordable Medicines Facility - malaria (AMFm). AMFm will ‘enable countries to increase the provision of affordable ACTs through the public, private and NGO sectors.' AMFm also ‘will reduce the manufacturer sales price of ACTs to public, private and not-for-profit sector buyers.' This will be an ideal way to ensure that quality ACTs are available to the public at a price they can..."
You should go read the whole entry. It's an education on malaria, and offers insight into just how multifaceted most health problems are, even when it's something as straightforward as treating and preventing an infection.
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