Workshop on anti-malarial drugs

Daily Graphic, Pg 14. Friday, January 22, 2010

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
THE Dodowa Health Research Centre (DHRC) in the Dangme West District in the Greater Accra Region has identified 53 chemical shops in the district where a safety and efficacy study on antimalarial drugs sold to patients is to be undertaken.
The study is being replicated in the Kintampo and Navrongo Health Research centres and is being sponsored by the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH).
Dubbed: “INDEPTH Effectiveness and Safety Studies of Antimalarials in Africa (INESS),” the study is aimed at identifying the authenticity and effectiveness of antimalarial drugs that are being sold out to people to ensure that fake or unwholesome drugs are weeded out of the districts.
The Director of the DHRC, Mrs Margaret Gyapong, made this known to a group of journalists at Dodowa during a day’s training workshop on antimalarials organised by the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN).
The INESS project, which is currently being replicated in Tanzania and will also be undertaken in Mozambique and Burkina Faso later, is aimed at providing national, regional and international health decision makers with independent and objective evidence on the safety and effectiveness of new antimalarial drugs as a basis for evolving a malarial treatment policy.
Giving a background to the implementation of the project, Mrs Gyapong said the project was in fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which included the development of new tools and evaluation of the effectiveness of both existing and new tools in specific health system settings.
According to her, Phases I, II and III randomised, controlled, clinical trials on new drugs were well supported and established the initial safety and efficacy of such new products.
Mrs Gyapong said, however, that large scale Phase IV studies in African health systems to determine effectiveness and rare adverse events through real-life systems were a missing piece in the drug development pipeline.
She said the INESS project would, therefore, develop and maintain a Phase IV Effectiveness Studies Consortium in Africa, as well as assess the effectiveness and safety of new malarial treatment and its determinants in real life in Africa.
The study, she said, would test the effectiveness of Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) such as Artemether-lumefrantine, Artesunate + amodiaquine, Artesunate + mefloquine, and Artesunate + sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine proven to be efficacious and safe for large scale use in routine health systems using eight District Surveillance Survey (DSS) sites in four countries in Africa with continuous demographic surveillance for monitoring of outcomes.
The district-wide implementation project, Mrs Gyapong said, would cover more than two million population in the implementation countries and would link health facility data to population-based data of DSS.
She said the team had so far visited 856 households out of which 727 had been asked questions on fevers and 165 cases recorded.