VARIOUS: A new cheap and easy-to-take combination pill to fight malaria is launched which could help reduce deaths from the killer disease in Africa

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis launches a new cheap and easy-to-take combination pill to fight malaria that could help reduce deaths from the killer disease in Africa, it said on Thursday. Sanofi is working with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) -- a group backed by charity Medecins Sans Frontieres -- and will sell the drug at no profit for less than $1 for adults and 50 cents for children under five years old. A French drugmaker on Thursday (March 1) launched a new cheap and easy-to-take combination pill to fight malaria that could help reduce deaths from the killer disease in Africa. Sanofi-Aventis is working with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) -- a group backed by charity Medecins Sans Frontieres -- and will sell the drug at no profit for less than $1 for adults and 50 cents for children under five years old. In an unusual move for a drugmaker, the pharmaceutical company has decided not to patent the medicine, leaving the door open for generic companies to copy it and produce their own cheap versions. The two-in-one pill is designed primarily for Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, but an amended form is also in the works for Latin America, South East Asia and India, where there are different types of malaria. The new medicine is a fixed-dose artemisinin-based combination, or ACT, that is more convenient and less expensive than currently available drugs -- and is seen as far more effective than older chloroquine treatments to which resistance is now common. "This treatment is new because, until now, the treatment required that the patient swallow eight pills a day, four white, four yellow, which in itself is very difficult when one has malaria, because of nausea, vomiting, fever," explained Bernard Pecoul, executive director of the non-profit DNDi group. Sanofi's product -- which combines artesunate, a derivative of artemisinin, with the older antimalarial amodiaquine -- will be manufactured at a Sanofi factory in Casablanca, Morocco. Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, kills at least a million people every year and makes 300 million seriously ill. Ninety percent of deaths are in Africa south of the Sahara, mostly among young children. The inappropriate use of old drugs like chloroquine has contributed to the current high death rate from malaria, prompting the World Health Organisation to call for use of ACTs that can fight multi-drug-resistant strains of malaria. Artesunate-Amodiaquine Winthrop, as the new drug is called, has already been registered in 10 African countries, in addition to Morocco, and 10 million treatment courses are expected to be sold this year, DNDi said. It will be available next month in Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritania, Guinea and Gabon, with other countries following.

ITN Source | March 2, 2007

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