Sanofi announced that its decades-long commitment to the Fight against Malaria at the opening of 10th Edition of the Pan-African Conference against Malaria.  The 10th Edition of this conference gathers together the directors of 34 African National Malaria Control Programs (NMCPs), representatives of the Global Fund To Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the Roll Back Malaria partnership, and scientific experts.

The Pan-African Conference Against Malaria, was organized for the first time in 2002 on the initiative of Sanofi, and is an annual meeting to exchange and share experiences amongst African managers in charge of malaria control, international organizations and scientific experts.

During his opening ceremony speech, Christopher A Viehbacher, chief Executive Officer of Sanofi declared: "Understanding that drugs are not enough to win the fight against malaria, Sanofi has undertaken a decade-long strategy of partnership with African National Malaria Control Programs, to propose solutions beyond existing treatments including prevention and diagnosis to meet the challenges of the emergence of treatment-resistance strains. Thanks to these major partnerships combining public and private actors, as well as non-profit organizations, the elimination of the malaria, which yesterday seemed utopian, has now become an achievable goal.”

Malaria is a major public health issue which, despite existing treatments, caused 800,000 deaths worldwide in 2009, of which more than 90% were in Africa.  Malaria is the third leading cause of mortality in African children, and remains a hurdle for development in the countries where the disease is endemic, quite particularly in the Sub-Saharan region.

While Sanofi has been a major actor in the fight against the malaria for over 80 years, via the production of medicines such as Quinimax, chloroquine (Nivaquine), and amodiaquine (Flavoquine), the Group has been committed to a partnership strategy for the last 10 years to combat malaria and to contribute to attaining several of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.  In 2001, Sanofi launched the Impact Malaria programme in order to supply medicines adapted to patient needs at affordable prices and support the stakeholders in the field by educational and information initiatives about prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria.

Among the most striking achievements of this program is the development of the medicine ASAQ Winthrop / Coarsucam (a fixed-dose combination of artesunate and amodiaquine) developed in partnership with DNDi (Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative), the first anti-malarial medicine developed by a public-private partnership, which constitutes a true innovation. The fixed-dose combination reduces the risk of drug-resistance development.  The number of tablets is also reduced, with just one tablet per day for three days, for children and 2 tablets per day for three days, for adults, instead of 4-8 tablets per day for alternative treatments.  Lastly, the price is less than $1 per treatment for adults and $0.50 for children.

Since 2008, Sanofi has distributed more than 100 million treatments of ASAQ Winthrop, in endemic countries, with a production centre in Morocco. Sanofi has also developed training tools and communication materials adapted to the various stakeholders in the fight against this disease and made them available to our partners in the field.  Additionally, to meet the challenges of emerging drug-resistance in malaria, Sanofi’s Therapeutic Strategic Unit for Infectious Diseases has launched several research programs in partnership with institutions and university research programmes.

This strategy developed for malaria, which combines prevention, diagnosis and treatment serves as a pilot for other programs in infectious diseases, but also in non-infectious diseases, such as mental health and epilepsy.