Despite it’s huge impact, malaria medication has changed little in decades. The common treatments for many years have been quinine which dates back to the 17th century, and choloroquine which was dates to the 1930s.
In 2001, the World Health Organisation recommended the first Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACT) like Coartem as the new frontline treatment for malaria. But pick up in Africa was surprisingly slow: Coartem were expensive, and patients continued to request the drugs that they already knew.
The price from $1.57 to $0.80 from 2001 – 2008 and the drug was widely distributed, with radio and TV campaigns stressing that this was the new officially approved treatment for malaria. However, it was still untrusted by the public wary of changing their medication to treat a potentially fatal disease.
While many drug campaigns aim to show “the science” or demonstrate the new technology behind their treatment, our aim was to show Coartem as unthreatening, familiar and safe. The illustrator who created this sympathetic portrait was Baingana Andrew.
