Malaria advocacy group, Malaria Taxes and Tariffs Advocacy Project (M-TAP), is insisting that governments drop all taxes and tariffs on medicines, mosquito nets and other anti-malaria tools in order to bring down the costs of the products and facilitate their delivery to the people who need it.
M-TAP says only six countries worldwide have completely removed tariffs on products used to fight the disease, despite a promise 10 years ago from African leaders to do so.
Campaigners say dropping taxes and tariffs can play a key role in cutting costs because the vast majority of drugs and other products used to fight malaria are imported from overseas.
To date, M-TAP says, only the African countries of Guinea, Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda and the Asian nation of Papua New Guinea have done away with tariffs on commodities recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as essential to effective malaria control.
These include long-lasting insecticide-treated bednets, malaria drugs known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), rapid diagnostic tests, insecticides for indoor spraying, and insecticide spray pumps.
M-TAP, which has been gathering evidence from nearly 80 malaria-hit countries over the past two years, said it found that taxes and tariffs on anti-malaria products provide only minimal revenues, and these gains are often offset by health costs and lost productivity from preventable malaria illnesses.
Taxes and tariffs may also prevent the poor from gaining access to malaria treatment, the group said.
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