Consultative Forum on AMFm — The Affordable Medicines Facility - malaria
DownloadResources for the Future (RFF) convened a Forum of operational experts, scientists, economists, and policymakers to consider the best available evidence to address issues still of concern to some stakeholders regarding the large-scale implementation of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria(AMFm).Each year malaria sickens 300 million people and kills almost a million children. When malaria strikes, prompt effective drug treatment is the only cure. Over the past half century, the armamentarium of effective antimalarial drugs has been depleted as malaria parasites have become resistant to the few drugs suitable for widespread use. There remains a single class of antimalarials still effective everywhere—artemisinins. Scientific experts have argued that we must do everything possible to prevent resistance developing to artemisinins. The World Health Organization has made clear that an essential step in preserving effectiveness is using artemisinins only in combination with other drugs, which dramatically lowers the probability that resistant strains will survive and emerge to spread around the globe, which was the case in the past when "monotherapy" was the norm. The primary objectives of AMFm are to expand access to effective antimalarials and to protect the effectiveness of artemisinins and other novel antimalarials by making combination treatments such as ACTs available at a low price.
Authors
Barry Bloom
Hellen Gelband
Ramanan Laxminarayan
