Events

On April 12, Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy, the president of UNITAID, and Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, president of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), signed a framework cooperation agreement between UNITAID and the IDB.

This agreement comes in the context of a long-term partnership between the IDB and UNITAID. During an initial period, the bank had already approved, in the framework of its partnership with UNITAID, a program amounting to $20 million for 2007-2008, i.e., $10 million per year, allowing UNITAID to provide artemisin-based combination therapies (ACT) to treat malaria in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia: Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sudan and Indonesia.

This contribution, which makes the IDB one of UNITAID’s privileged partners, is part of a broader program of development and fighting poverty linked to the upcoming creation of a special fund to fight poverty. Beyond the $20 million for purchasing medications, the IDB also approved $30 million for 2007-2008 for other aspects of the battle against malaria.

Thanks to economies of scale, UNITAID’s intervention will help obtain the best prices on the market, with the aim of increasing access to ACT at prices that are affordable for the largest number of people.

Malaria is one of the deadliest scourges in developing countries; between 350 and 600 million people contract the disease each year and one to three million die of it. Fifty-seven percent of the people affected are in Africa, where 80 percent of malaria-related deaths occur. While the disease is becoming increasingly resistant to traditional treatments, artemisin-based combination therapies-although more costly-are effective in 95 percent of the cases.

This partnership supplements UNITAID’s current efforts to fight malaria, particularly in conjunction with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is slated to provide more than 50 million treatments in 12 African countries by 2010, as well as in Burundi and Liberia in 2007, for a total of nearly 1.5 million treatments. Finally, as part of the Global Fund’s Round 6, UNITAID is also providing $19 million for 2007-2008 to about 10 African and Asian countries.

This effort will complement that of other international donors. The agreement provides for extending the two institutions’ collaboration to other epidemics covered by UNITAID, e.g. HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

The agreement will enter into force after its approval by UNITAID’s board of directors.