ETHIOPIA: Minister blasts MSF over malaria treatment
ADDIS ABABA, 23 December 2003 (IRIN) - Ethiopia’s Health Minister Kebede Tadesse on Tuesday launched an unprecedented attack on the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
His comments come amid an escalating row over how to treat a major malaria epidemic, threatening 15 million and currently killing at least 20 people a day.
“It pains us to see a once exemplary organisation being led by charlatans masquerading as the sole agents of medical and scientific knowledge,” the minister told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
MSF has called for the introduction of a new cocktail of anti-malarial treatment, arguing that existing treatments are proving ineffective.
But Kebede told journalists it was “inappropriate” to call for new treatment in the middle of an epidemic.
“We cannot introduce a drug because somebody is dying,” the minister said. “This is unethical. We are in the process of pilot testing.”
The government is currently carrying out tests on the new method – known as Artemisinin Combination Therapies - and is expected to announce the results in January.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation have both backed the government’s stance and warned of the dangers of changing treatment.
Dr Olusegun Bubuniyi, WHO head in Ethiopia, said: “If you just introduce new drugs into a country you may in fact create more problems than you are resolving and we have examples of that in Africa.”
According to the health ministry, some 448 districts in Ethiopia are currently at risk of malaria – potentially some 46 million people.
Kebede also acknowledged that the malaria death toll could be three to five times higher because of under-reporting in rural areas.
He added that US $10 million had been secured from the international community to fight the epidemic, which he said was “contained” and not out of control.
However, MSF stuck to its guns and said it still believed the new treatment should be introduced immediately, despite the criticism.
“You start by piloting a project and this is what we requested,” said Jean-Luc Anglade, head of MSF France which has called for the treatment change.
Anglade told journalists that in an epidemic, WHO recommended using the best treatment available. "The best available treatment is not being used,” he said.
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