Blog examines U.S. government's stance on future of AMFm

Sep 25 2012

In the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Global Health Policy" blog, Victoria Fan, a CGD research fellow, and Rachel Silverman, a research assistant for the CGD global health team, examine the potential reasons behind "the U.S. government's apparent lack of support, particularly its legislated 'opt-in' stance," on the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm), and they note "AMFm's continued survival [is] all but impossible without an explicit endorsement by the U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator (currently Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer) who leads the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative (PMI)." Fan and Silverman continue, "The question that the U.S. government must face is not only whether there is compelling evidence of AMFm's success, but whether the termination of AMFm would be more disastrous than AMFm's continuation, albeit modified." They conclude, "Most importantly, personal biases and potential conflicts of interest need to be put aside -- if not made transparent -- for the benefit of evidence-based debate and decision-making and for the many people and children that would have died without AMFm" (9/21).