Roll Back Malaria: a failing global health challenge: Developing a market for bed nets and insecticides is problematic

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1378-b

BMJ 2004;328:1378 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1378-b

Letter

Roll Back Malaria: a failing global health challenge

Developing a market for bed nets and insecticides is problematic

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—As shown in Yamey's recent editorial on the failureof the Roll Back Malaria campaign,¹ appropriate economic thinkingfor sustainable development in Africa continues to be ignored.Thus, the customer for bed nets is not the individual Africanbut the large non-governmental organisation, whose orders arelargely based on price, not quality.

Economic lessons show, however, that markets are developed bythe quality of a product. People, even poor Africans, are preparedto pay for quality, and although it is true that not everyonecan afford to buy nets, once a critical mass of users of impregnatednets has been established then non-net users are also protected.

Rather than insisting on a low price, non-governmental organisationscould instead set the manufacturers of nets the more difficulttarget of producing, say, a permanently impregnated, durablenet that works against Culex quinquefasciatus as well as anophelines.

Similarly, while the arguments . . . [Full text of this article]

J Derek Charlwood, honorary fellow

Danish Bilharziasis Laboratory, Furvela, Mozambique dc@bilharziasis.dk