Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm)

Overview

The Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm) is an innovative financing mechanism designed to expand access to the most effective treatment for malaria—artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs)—through the public, private, and NGO sectors. It will reduce the use of drugs that no longer work because of drug resistance and mitigate the use of artemisinin by itself, as monotherapy, thereby delaying the onset of resistance to that drug and preserving its effectiveness.

CDDEP researchers have been involved with the global subsidy idea that has become AMFm since 2002, when the U.S. Institute of Medicine committee first deliberated on the questions of how to expand access to ACTs while maintaining the effectiveness of artemisinin compounds.  Hellen Gelband is an author of the 2004 report of that committee, Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance, and Ramanan Laxminarayan was a member of the committee. Laxminarayan and CDDEP colleague David Smith published a seminal evaluation of the potential effectiveness of AMFm in the journal Health Affairs. These researchers have convened meetings and symposia regularly, addressing new issues and facing new challenges. Laxminarayan continues to advise on AMFm development and operations.