Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Programs

Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm)

last updated Jul 31, 2012

Overview

Implementing organization: 
The Global Fund
Implementation Partner(s): 
Roll Back Malaria Partnership, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank, RBM Task Force for the AMFm, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands, UK-DFID, UNICEF, WHO, Ministers of Health, Resources For the Future, William J. Clinton Foundation
Legal Status: 
Public-private partnership
Year Launched: 
2009
Stage: 
Existing/expansion stage
Income Level of Target Population: 
All income levels

Funding

Primary Source of Funding: 
Donor
Additional Source(s) of Funding: 
Government
Funders: 
Government of Norway, Government of the Netherlands, Government of the UK, the Roll Back Malaria partnership
Summary: 

The Affordable Medicines Facility–Malaria is an innovative financing mechanism designed to expand access to the most effective treatment for malaria, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Through increased provision of affordable ACTs via the public, private, and NGO sectors, the program saves lives and reduces the use of less-effective treatments to which malaria parasites are becoming increasingly resistant. It also reduces the use of artemisinin as a single treatment or monotherapy, thereby delaying the onset of resistance to that drug and preserving its effectiveness.

Program goals/rationale: 

For decades now, treating malaria has become increasingly challenging because the most commonly used treatments, Chloroquiun and sulfadoxine pyrimethamine (SP), are no longer effective as populations have come very resistant to them. New improved drugs, based on artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), are now available but they are much more expensive than the older treatments. Despite ACTs being WHO preferred treatment for malaria since 2001, few people in developing countries can afford them.

Key program components: 

The AMFm aims to subsidise the cost of ACTs so that they are more accessible and affordable. It hopes that the lower price of ACTs will help to drive out cheap, but less effective treatments because resistance to them is widespread, as well as artemisinin monotherapy.

To achieve this aim, the Global Fund will reduce the manufacturer sales price of ACTs to public, private and not-for-profit sector buyers. The Global Fund will do this by negotiating a lower price for ACTs and then paying a large proportion of this directly to manufacturers on behalf of buyers (a buyer “co-payment”). This means that buyers will only pay approximately US$0.05 for each course of ACTs. For patients who currently pay for treatment, this is expected to result in a significant reduction in the price of ACTs from about US$6-10 per treatment to about US$0.20-0.50.

The AMFm principles, objectives and technical design were developed by the Roll Back Malaria AMFm Taskforce based on the recommendations of Economy Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow's report "Saving lives, buying time" published in 2004. The RBM Board of November 2007 approved them and requested the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to become the AMFm manager.

The first phase of Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria has been launched in a small group of countries, to enable lessons to be learned before expanding the initiative to other malaria-endemic countries. Participants include Benin, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania (mainland and Zanzibar) and Uganda.

Program history: 

The AMFm principles, objectives and technical design were developed by the Roll Back Malaria AMFm Taskforce based on the recommendations of Economy Nobel Prize winner Pr Kenneth Arrow's report "Saving lives, buying time" published in 2004. The RBM Board of November 2007 approved them and requested the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to become the AMFm manager.

Additional Information:

Preliminary Report of the Independent Evaluation of AMFm Phase 1 can be found here.

PreviewAttachmentSize
GF-B18-07_ReportAMFmAdHocCommittee.pdf249.57 KB
AMFmFAQs_en.pdf215.25 KB
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