Ever since Chloroquine (CQ) was officially withdrawn as the first-line anti-malaria drug in Tanzania in 2001 there has been a lot of uncertainty and confusion with regards to the reliable cure for the disease. For many years CQ was the most dependable suppressive drug until the appearance of resistance to it nearly 15 years ago.

Even when Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP) was introduced to replace CQ as the first-line treatment for malaria, it did not take long before it was also withdrawn amid reports of malaria parasites increasingly becoming resistant to these drugs.

It is now common to hear people asking a rather perplexing question whenever they catch malaria or when a family member is diagnosed with malaria: What drug should we take against malaria?

Fears have been expressed that most anti-malarials which are being sold in various pharmacies in the country are actually in the testing stage and may not be reliable for treatment of malaria.

According to a study published recently by PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, some 35 per cent of anti-malarial drugs sold in six major African cities including Tanzania failed basic quality tests.

The study further found that artemisinin monotherapies, which the World Health Organization (WHO) rejects as substandard, remain common in most African countries. Substandard anti-malarial drugs cause an estimated 200,000 avoidable deaths each year.

It is for this reason that we call upon the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to address the problem of substandard anti-malarial drugs to prevent deaths of unsuspecting malaria patients.

As researchers pointed out, African governments need to increase access to quality anti-malarial drugs as substandard drugs “not only endanger lives today, but also jeopardize future malaria treatment strategies by accelerating parasite resistance.”

Statistics show that in Tanzania close to 90 per cent of the population is at risk of acquiring malaria, while the number of clinical cases is about 20 million, with approximately 60,000 deaths annually.

There is need for the government to make an aggressive effort to remove all inappropriate and ineffective drugs (most of which are counterfeit products) from the shelves, while at the same time we look into the way of bringing down the costs of other effective drugs.

Speaking at the launch of the first high quality dispersible anti-malarial for babies and children, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Prof. David Mwakyusa, admitted that there is need for concerted efforts to bring down the costs as was the case with Chloroquine.