Cut-price malaria pill for Africa launched

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis has launched a cheap anti-malaria pill that could cut deaths from the killer disease in Africa.

Sanofi said on Thursday it would sell the drug at no profit, for less than $1 for adults and 50 cents for children under five.

The two-in-one pill is designed primarily for Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, although an amended version is also in the works for Latin America, South East Asia and India, where there are different types of malaria.

It will be available next month in Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritania, Guinea and Gabon, with other countries following.

Sanofi's ASAQ product, combining artesunate, a derivative of artemisinin, with the older antimalarial amodiaquine, will be manufactured at a Sanofi factory in Casablanca, Morocco.

The new medicine is more convenient and less expensive than available drugs, and is regarded as far more effective than older chloroquine treatments to which resistance is now common.

Sanofi is working with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which helped set up DNDi in 2003, said the combination drug would be 40 to 50 percent less expensive for adults than the separate tablets.

Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, kills at least 1 million people every year and makes 300 million seriously ill. Ninety percent of deaths are in Africa south of the Sahara, mostly among young children.

NO PATENT

In an unusual move for a drugmaker, Sanofi has decided not to patent the medicine, leaving the door open for generic companies to copy it and produce their own cheap versions.

Bernard Pecoul, executive director of the non-profit DNDi group, said the strategy would maximise access.

"This product will be available on a large scale for two reasons -- first, because Sanofi-Aventis will use their considerable distribution in Africa and, second, because they have accepted non-exclusivity, which means we will have multiple sources of production very soon," he said.

The inappropriate use of old drugs like chloroquine has contributed to the high death rate from malaria.

ASAQ has been registered in 10 African countries, in addition to Morocco, and 10 million treatment courses are expected to be sold this year, Pecoul said.

The no-profit price will apply to sales to public organisations, international institutions, non-governmental organisations and programmes promoting access to drugs in pharmacies in countries where malaria is endemic.