http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96705/GLOBAL-The-trouble-with-affordable-anti-malarials
The Affordable Medicines Facility (AMF) for malaria drugs - administered by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria - has been controversial from the start. Most of the vendors in Africa that provide these medications have no medical training, have pill bottles just lying out for purchase, they don't write prescriptions, and there's always the worry that what you're buying is not the real thing. Restricting them from selling though can be dangerous, for those who live in a village that is very far from a clinic.
Ten years ago it became evident that these vendors were going to be a problem, they were selling cheaper versions of the drugs, outdated versions, weaker versions which was almost sure to end up in a resistance buildup and make the drugs ineffective.
A plan was put into action to flood that market with the effective expensive drugs, but at lower prices, what that ended up creating was a bad system, but with better drugs. Since introducing this system other complications have arisen too. Even though these shopkeepers are selling the top brand drugs at a low price, they still are untrained medically and unable to make a diagnosis. How does one treat a disease with no knowledge of what it is or the steps that need to be taken to cure it.
Its a tough situation to weigh out, remove those vendors and you critically restrict a poor populations access to medicine. Continue to let those vendors exist and you potentially put the same people at risk, having access to medicine is only beneficial if youre getting the medicine you need.
Malaria is a huge killer in Africa and it is necessary for drugs to be given to countries in need in Africa. Without these drugs, these countries would have even more deaths that are completely preventable with a simple regimen of medicine. Doctors in Africa are very scarce and without them, drugs are hard to be administered properly. Some markets will sell the drugs improperly and this will effect the effectiveness of the drugs and how many people get the right drugs. This is a huge problem that needs to be solved.
ReplyDeleteEconomic welfare seems to be the only solution to problems like this. As mentioned in class, poverty is the main reason for so many of the health problems around the globe and there is no quick and easy medical fix for some of the health issues. The country as a whole needs to be able to afford and be educated about health concerns and medicine, and until then, it is impractical to try to fix unsafe drug vending. Although in our view this practice is wrong and unsafe, in the eyes of some African countries, this is the only way to distribute and encourage poor people to get the drugs they need.
ReplyDeleteEducation for the citizens of these countries needs to be a focus in order to really help them evolve their medical abilities and standings. There are so few doctors in Africa, let alone in individual villages. There is no quick medical fix but there should be a push to educate the people of these villages as a long term fix so that they can understand and help themselves medically. Without ever educating the society, it will never be able to move forward and always rely on other countries who are more advanced because their education standards are so much greater. It may seem counter intuitive to focus on a non-medical fix for medical problems, but these problems always stem from lack of knowledge and education.
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