The cost of the switch from old malaria drugs to ACT should not be an issue since as more manufacturers produce the drug, the price will drop significantly as it did with AIDS drugs. It's not good enough for the international community to say new treatments are too expensive.

We are increasingly concerned that after two years of importing the drug we have not been able to establish a reliable importation system. This seriously limits our ability to start new patients on the drug who need it as a matter of life and death, since we can't assure continuity of the supply.

The idea was to kick-start the process, make it sustainable and then re-invest our resources elsewhere. As a private NGO our job is to go in, tackle an acute need and advocate that those properly responsible take over.

With AIDS we saw what can be done when people start paying enough attention to a disease -- prices of AIDS drugs dropped from $15,000 to under $200. The same sense of urgency should be given to malaria.