PART 9.3
There are medicines that could save the lives of the 500,000 children who die from malaria each year. Most of these children live in the low-income countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Novartis manufactures the drug, artemisinin-based combination therapy, that is the standard of care for the treatment of P. falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease. Although the global health community has for a long time been skeptical and wary of the private sector where profit was the driving force, Novartis happened to have a CEO who came from the field of global health and was inspired by the vision of global health equity. But neither these malaria-endemic countries nor WHO could afford to purchase commercially the amounts of this drug needed to treat the children who were at risk.