Malaria product portfolio would benefit from greater cohesion amongst st...(iately delivered to malaria patients. ....),Health

Over the past year, Dr Mary Moran and her team from The George Institute, supported by the Global Forum for Health Research through World Bank funding, engaged with main stakeholders in the malaria field to provide donors with a 5-year map of the future, including what malaria products are in the pipeline, how much donors will need to spend to move them towards success, and where this spending should focus. Key findings were:

• The additional cost for clinical development of the global malaria vaccine and drug portfolio over the next 5 years is likely to be around $US 600 million

• A substantial proportion of this (e.g. up to 60% in the case of vaccine trials) will go to Africa. This represents a very large injection of business funding into Africa

• Up to US $250 million may go to small Western drug companies and Contract Research Organizations and to developing country manufacturers: again, a substantial injection of funds into desired growth areas.

The report also debunks some common beliefs about African capacity (or lack thereof). In particular, the notion that Africa needs investment to build new malaria trial sites, and that existing African trial sites could be sustainable if they were only more business-like. Sustainability is a myth, said Dr Moran, at least under current conditions. Currently, many donors and developers strangle a sites ability to stay afloat because they routinely pay project overheads that are well below costs, and are resistant to providing core funding. No Western institution could survive under those conditions.

More encouragingly, the report noted that well-planned and sustained donor investment since 2000 means that, if well managed, we now have enough malaria trial sites in Africa to meet all likely future demand out to 2012 and probably well beyond. Funders and trial sites can justly congratulate themselves on their
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