An expensive malaria program that would provide cheap drugs
for poor patients may not happen after health official fought over the
effectiveness of the program. In 2010 the Affordable Medicines Facility for
malaria was started. This program cost four hundred and sixty million dollars
and was started to subsidize artemesinin combination drugs which is said to be
the most effective malaria treatment. A
report released by Oxfam said that the program was a failure because they
didn't follow those who received the drug so there was no proof whether or not
it worked. According to the World Health Organization “improving the rational
use of malaria drugs was not a specific strategic objective. Another journal
said that the program was effective way to lower the price of the drugs and
made them available to everyone. After the program had begun there was a bigger
supply of the drugs but it didn’t measure whether or not it lowered the cases
of malaria. The Global Fund called it “a practical approach to fighting disease”
and that these malaria drugs were not available in in many African countries
before this program.
This article is significant because a program that has made
the most effective drug that prevents malaria available might be stopped.
Without this program malaria might still be a major problem. Although the
program has not measured how effective the drug they are using is the program
has still been able to get the medicine out there to people who need it. The
program has been using the most expensive medicine but it is also said to be
the most effective. A way to keep the program going but lower the costs would
be to make a cheaper drug available to people. The downside to this would be
that it wouldn’t be the most effective drug. But the program could still be
open, costs could be lowered, and medicine to prevent malaria would still be available.
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