WHO Announces Shortage of ‘Most Effective’ Malaria Drug Through March 2005

The World Health Organization on Monday announced that the "most effective" drug used to treat the "deadliest" forms of malaria is in short supply and countries using it as first-line of therapy will not receive adequate amounts of the medication until March 2005, AFP/Yahoo! News reports (AFP/Yahoo! News, 11/8/04). Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis reported that it would be unable to produce sufficient amounts of the medicine -- called artemether-lumefantrine and made from an extract of the Chinese plant artemisinin -- because of supply shortages of the herb, according to Reuters (Reuters, 11/8/04). Supply "crises are looming" in the 40 countries that have adopted the drug as the "centerpiece" of malaria treatment, the New York Times reports. The shortage has "created a major wave of shock" at WHO, according to Dr. Andrea Bosman of the organization's Roll Back Malaria program. Paul Lalvani, procurement manager for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said that countries that have adopted the drug are "really in a bind" (McNeil, New York Times, 11/14/04). Orders for the drug increased from 220,000 treatments in 2001 to 10 million in 2004 and are expected to exceed 60 million in 2005 (AFP/Yahoo! News, 11/8/04). WHO currently is offering technical assistance to countries facing artemether-lumefantrine shortages, and recommends that they increase their supplies of second-line treatments, such as quinine (WHO release, 11/8/04). "We are working very hard to obtain adequate supplies. We are optimistic that agricultural production of artemisinin will pick up now considerably when growers see huge demand on the market," Novartis spokesperson Nehl Horton said, adding that the company is in a "massive scale-up of production capacity" (Reuters, 11/9/04).