New project on anti-malaria drugs

Saturday, March 14, 2009 (The Mirror)
By Rebecca Kwei
A new project that will help monitor the safety and effectiveness of anti-malaria drugs, especially newly registered ones, will soon be launched.
Known as the Indepth Effectiveness and Safety Studies (INESS) of anti-malaria drugs in Africa, the project will provide the platform for the effectiveness and efficiency of antimalarials to be studied in real-life settings in Africa.
The four-year project, which is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will take place in sub-Saharan Africa, which has 90 per cent of all malaria cases world-wide.
The countries involved in the project are Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. It will, however, start in Ghana and Tanzania.
Briefing members of the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), a group made up of African journalists and scientists working together to reduce malaria on the continent, the Executive Director of Indepth Network, Dr Osman A. Sankoh, said malaria was currently one of the leading killer diseases in the world and that a combination of tools and methods were being used to combat it.
He said the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report for 2008 said “the new malaria treatment strategies are effective but under-utilised and improved access to more effective antimalarial drugs can substantially reduce malaria cases and deaths”.
Therefore, he said, the effectiveness and efficiency of antimalarials need to be further studied in real-life settings in Africa in order to provide better policy options for the array of anti-malarial drugs currently on the market.
Dr Sankoh explained that drug development consisted of four phases and that INESS would provide the missing final section (phase IV) of drug development process for Africa and ensure rapid access to practical evidence on treatment effectiveness and safety.
He said the project was important because it would provide national, regional and international health decision makers with independent and objective evidence on the safety and effectiveness of new antimalarial drugs as a basis for a malaria treatment policy in Africa.
He emphasised that the project was not to change the malaria drug policy in Ghana but that since drugs went through a lot of stages before finally getting to the user, there was the need to continuously assess their effectiveness to provide relevant data for decision makers.
Dr Sankoh said INESS would be conducted in close collaboration with the National Malaria Control Programme and the Pharmacovilgance Department of the University of Ghana Medical School, Korle-Bu.