Bill Clinton

New York, July 18 (Reuters): Former US President Bill Clinton has unveiled a deal with four Indian and two Chinese firms to cut a key malaria drug price by a third and slash the price volatility of a vital ingredient by 70 per cent.

Artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACT drugs, are recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) because of growing resistance to older treatments such as chloroquine.

But the supply of artemisinin, a plant extract used in Chinese medicine that takes up to 14 months to be produced, has been volatile, with prices ranging from $150 to $1,100 a kilogram in the past four years.

“We have reached agreements with the suppliers at every level of the production chain from the extraction of the raw ingredient to the manufacturer of the final drug to allow sustained and lower pricing,” Clinton told a news conference on Thursday.

The Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative has struck deals with India’s Cipla and Ipca Laboratories — manufacturer of ACT drugs, Calyx and Mangalam Drugs, which turn the plant extract into an active pharmaceutical ingredient, and China’s Holleypharm and PIDI Standard, which grow the plants.

The lower prices will be available to the 69 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean that make up the foundation’s purchasing consortium.

Cipla and Ipca have agreed to offer two of the most widely used ACT drugs at lower prices — artesunate and amodiaquine at or below an average ceiling price of 48 cents per treatment, 30 per cent below current market rates, and artemether-lumafantrine at or below an average ceiling price of 91 cents.

Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, infects between 300 million and 500 million people each year, killing more than 1 million of them, according to the WHO.

Novartis is the dominant ACT drug supplier and the large Swiss company has been able to absorb the volatile costs of artemisinin rather than passing it on to patients. It said it has lost more than $100 million on the drug.

“We know first-hand addressing the health problems of the developing world is challenging and no single player can be successful,” said Daniel Vasella, chairman and chief executive officer of Novartis.

The price and supply instability of the drug meant few suppliers had entered the market because of the financial risks and if they did, they may not be able to shield patients from costs like Novartis has, the foundation said.