Novartis Offers Cheap Anti-Malarial to Developing World
Pharmaceutical companies took a beating over the issue over of whether they should provide cheap anti-AIDS drugs to the developing world, but Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis is stepping to the plate to offer an extremely effective anti-malarial drug at a steep discount to developing countries where the disease is endemic.
In cooperation with the World Health Organization, Novartis will sell its anti-malaria drug Coartem at about $0.10 per tablet to African and other nations compared to the $1.75 per tablet it sells the drug for in Switzerland.
Coartem is a very exiting compound since it shows incredibly high cure rates, even in areas plagued by variant forms of malaria that are resistant to most drugs used against the disease. Using a combination of an extract from a Chinese plant along with synthetic substances, Coartem cures about 95 percent of cases malaria in which it is used.
Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella told the BBC, “Novartis will forgo any profit in favor of getting this medicine to patients who otherwise would never have the chance to receive effective malaria treatment.”
Source:
Africa to get cheap malaria drug. The BBC, May 23, 2001.
The Novartis Offers Cheap Anti-Malarial to Developing World by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: Malaria