Global Health Policy

This is a joint post with Heather Lanthorn.

The Global Fund Board’s decision over the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm) rapidly approaches, and tensions within the malaria community are acute. In her global health blog for The Guardian, Sarah Boseley characterizes the rift as one of

“huge arguments and intense passions…[because] it is about the belief on one side that the private sector is the most effective way to get medicines to those who need them – and the certainty on the other side that bolstering the public sector to diagnose and treat people is a fairer and safer way to go. These are not just practical matters, but highly political.”

A new research study by Hoare et al in PLoS (ungated) projects that, within ten years after countries attain universal access to antiretroviral treatment for AIDS, one fifth of all patients starting treatment will never have a chance to benefit from the least-expensive and least-toxic treatments, because their initial infection will be a drug resistant strain of HIV.