The cost of the anti-malaria drug Artemisinin com­bi­na­tion ther­apy is more than poor peo­ple can afford. Researchers are say­ing that the high cost results in another mil­lion deaths a year from malaria. Poor malaria suf­fer­ers instead go to an an older, cheaper drug that is not nearly as effec­tive as ACT.

From Reuters, reporter Kate Kel­land tells us more about the study into malaria drug use.

Artemisinin com­bi­na­tion ther­apy, or ACT, drugs made by firms such as Novar­tis and Sanofi-Aventis can cost as much as 65 times the daily min­i­mum wage in some African coun­tries, accord­ing to a study of 6 high-risk nations by Pop­u­la­tions Ser­vices Inter­na­tional Malaria.

ACTs can cost up to $11 to patients buy­ing over the counter, while older drugs to less effec­tive drugs cost just $0.30 cents.

“With most peo­ple access­ing anti-malarial med­ica­tion through the pri­vate sec­tor, price becomes a crit­i­cally impor­tant bar­rier,” said Desmond Chavasse, direc­tor of PSI.

“A full course of an adult treat­ment of ACT can be up to 65 times the min­i­mum daily wage. This pro­vides an over­pow­er­ing incen­tive (for patients) to make the wrong anti-malarial choice.”

Malaria is a poten­tially deadly dis­ease trans­mit­ted via mos­quito bites. Chil­dren account for about 90 per­cent of the deaths in the sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia — the worst affected areas.

Chavasse was speak­ing to reporters from Nairobi, where he was at an inter­na­tional malaria con­fer­ence to present a study called ACT­watch — a research project by PSI and the Lon­don School of Hygiene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine on the malaria drugs mar­ket across 6 sub-Saharan African coun­tries and Cambodia.