Charles Ariko
18 September 2008
Kampala — THE Government is to provide Coartem, an anti-malaria drug, to private health units at a subsidised price, the Ministry of Health announced yesterday.
Primary health care state minister Emmanuel Otaala said the ministry, in conjunction with donors, would provide the drugs at sh200 per dose for children and sh800 for adults.
The artemisinin combination therapy drugs, also known as Coartem, cost between sh12,000 and sh18,000 in private clinics. Otaala made the remarks yesterday while addressing a press conference at the ministry's headquarters.
This was ahead of today's launch of the pilot project in Kaliro district.
Other pilot districts are Pallisa, Budaka, Kamuli and Soroti districts.
Kabarole, Kamwenge and Mubende are the other pilot areas because they have high malaria transmission densities.
The ministry and Medicines for Malaria Venture are spearheading the initiative. Otaala said the subsidised drugs were intended to phase out chloroquine and fansidar, saying malaria parasites had become resistant to them
He explained that although government health units provide the anti-malaria drugs for free, studies had indicated that between 40%-60% of the population seek their first treatment from the private health centres.
Otaala said it was against this background that the ministry had decided to distribute the drugs to make them more available to the population.
"A big proportion of our population still receives ineffective medicines such as chloroquine and fansidar. There is need to replace these ineffective drugs to ensure that people get life-saving artemisinin combination therapy drugs (Coartem)," Otaala said.
Otaala said the ministry would monitor the distribution of the drugs in addition to training health providers.
He said the drugs would be labelled to distinguish them from other anti-malarial drugs.
Chris Hentschel, the chief executive officer of Medicines for Malaria Ventures, said the artemisinin combination therapy drugs could make a patient feel better within a few hours and completely rid the malaria parasites from the body within three days.
The other partners coordinating the project include the International Dispensary Association Solutions, Malaria Consortium, Management Science for Healthy and the National Drug Authority.
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