The Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) was an initiative piloted in Africa. Its main objective was to increase access to Quality Assured Artemisinin-containing Combination Treatments (QAACTs) through a co-payment mechanism. The co-payment was intended to reduce the end-user price of QAACTS to the same level as chloroquine or sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine. The pilot programmes ended in December 2012 and the Global Fund asked the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) to take leadership in planning for the transition in 2013 to the next phase of this initiative. The RBM Board discussed this issue at its May 2012 meeting.
To inform these discussions, the RBM Executive Committee (EC) commissioned from TropMed Pharma Consulting a facts-based situational analysis of:
- the role of the private sector in delivering high quality antimalarial diagnosis and treatment;
- the global experience of social marketing programmes and subsidies in increasing access to health related commodities, especially those related to malaria;
- the current situation of AMFm and what will be known about it at the end of the Phase I pilots.