Dissent on malaria drug program "stifled"

The malaria community has recently been discouraging debate, according to a health care expert, about the $2.0-billion Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm) program, which was approved by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria last month. Over the next five years, the plan is to massively increase the quantity of antimalarial medicines distributed to areas of the world where the disease is endemic.

Roger Bate, a resident fellow at a US free market-oriented think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, and director of the health advocacy group, Africa Fighting Malaria, warned that although the AMFm "may increase access to good-quality medicines and save thousands of lives...it may also increase drug resistance by pouring medicines of unknown quality into poor countries with under-regulated health systems."

The problem, Dr Bate argues, is twofold. First, despite the objections of the World Health Organization, at least eight drug firms continue to market artesunate monotherapies. Second, he cites Arata Kochi, the head of the WHO's malaria program, who was allegedly sidelined following his critical remarks about the trend towards homogeneity of thinking in scientific research caused by the major funds.