First consignment of AMFm drugs arrive

Saturday, September 11, 2010 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
THE first consignment of CO-pay drugs under the Affordable Medicines Facility-Malaria (AMFm) has arrived in the country and will soon be rolled out.
The AMFm is an initiative to ensure that people suffering from malaria have access to inexpensive, effective anti-malaria treatment in the form of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT).
The Programme Manager of the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), Dr Constance Bart-Plange, made this known when members of the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), a group of journalists and scientists working to fight malaria paid a visit to the offices of the programme in Accra.
She explained that the roll of the first consignment of three million treatment doses have not yet been rolled out since that of the medicines for the public sector has not been received yet.
Dr Bart-Plange noted that ACTs were not affordable to many people but under the AMFm it will be very cheap at a price as little as GH¢1.10p and expressed the hope that it will stop people from using chloroquine and other monotherapies which were no longer effective treatment for malaria.
She explained that under the AMFm which is been hosted by the Global Fund with the support of UNITAID and members of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership there was a financing mechanism for drug manufacturers to reduce the price of ACTs to ensure that the poor and vulnerable in society get access to the medicines.
She said there was also the need to educate the public not to equate the low cost of the ACTs under the AMFm facility to low quality since the medicines were of good quality and have been approved by the World Health Organisation.
Dr Bart-Plange expressed concern about the over diagnosing of malaria and said it was important that any fever presented at the hospital should be confirmed through microscopy or the rapid diagnostic test (RDT) to be malaria.
“The era where every fever was malaria is over” she stressed.
To this end, she said the NMCP has distributed a lot of RDT kits to health facilities and pharmacies to ensure that people are confirmed to be having malaria before are given an anti-malarial.
Dr Bart-Plange noted that the frequent use of malarial drugs when one does not have malaria leads to abuse of the drug.
On the use of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs), she said a survey showed that almost every household in Ghana had an ITN but it was the “sleeping in the ITN” that was the problem.
However, she said even if adults do not sleep under the ITNs it was important that children and pregnant women who were most vulnerable to malaria slept under them.
She said the programme also piloted an Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) project in the north and Obuasi and it will soon be rolled out nation-wide to cover 45 districts where it was feasible.
Dr Bart-Plange urged the media to continue the education that the anopheles mosquito which transmits the parasite causing malaria does not breed in filth but rather in relatively clean stagnant waters.
She commended AMMREN for its efforts in the fight against malaria and gave the assurance that the NMCP will continue to collaborate with the group.
The Ghana Country Co-ordinator of AMMREN, Mrs Clare Banoeng-Yakubo thanked the NMCP for its support over the years and expressed the hope that the deliberations will go a long way to improve the lives of people through malaria control.