Special pricing arrangements

Novartis has been providing its antimalarial drug Coartem® without profit since 2001 in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).

In September 2006, in an effort to enhance access to this important malaria therapy in low-income regions, we accelerated production to 100 million treatment courses (up from 30 million in 2005, and 4 million in 2004) and reduced the average cost for a treatment course of Coartem by more than one-third.

This price reduction is expected to have the greatest impact on children and adolescents, who constitute about 75% of malaria patients taking Coartem. Countries will now be able to treat twice the number of children under age five with the same amount of funds.