Africa suffering from WHO's old drugs

[dArKeR]

by Jeremy Laurance

Two of the world's most powerful medical organisations have been accused of medical malpractice for knowingly promoting useless drugs that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Global Fund, which was set up to buy drugs for poor countries, have allocated millions of dollars to malaria medicines that are no longer effective against the disease, a group of specialists say.

They claim negligence by the two organisations contributed to a rising death rate from malaria, which has doubled in a decade in some parts of Africa because of growing resistance to older drugs.

The WHO launched its Roll Back Malaria programme in 1998 with a target to halve the number of deaths by 2010 but, six years into the 12-year programme, deaths have risen from between 600 000 and 800 000 to more than one million annually, of which 90 percent are children under five.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=vn20040411133339749C810399&set_id=1