Abstract
Introduction
This report is the second edition of the UNITAID Malaria medicines landscape. It is part of an ongoing initiative within UNITAID to describe and monitor the landscape for malaria commodities. It focuses on product, technology and market dynamics around antimalarial medicines, specifically artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). It includes an overview of the current ACT technology and market landscape, and a high-level perspective on barriers to access and potential opportunities for market-based interventions to address these barriers. Information in this report was collected through a variety of methods, including desk research, literature reviews, dataset analyses and consultation with experts.
Public health problem
Despite the fact that malaria cases have decreased 30% since the peak number of cases in 2000 and mortality rates have decreased by 47%, malaria remains a substantial global health problem (1). While gains have been made since the mid-2000s, the current trajectory is not sufficient to reach the World Health Assembly goals of 75% case reduction (to ~56 million [M] cases) and near zero deaths by 2015. In 2013, there were an estimated 198M cases of malaria across 97 countries (2). Africa has the highest burden and South-East Asia has the second-highest burden. Malaria mortality primarily impacts children, with 78% of cases occurring in children under 5 years old (2). It is estimated that approximately 8M cases of uncomplicated malaria progress to severe malaria each year (3). Although this represents only a minority of cases worldwide, reducing severe malaria is critical to reducing malaria mortality.