Malaria Experts and African Leaders Challenged to Maintain the Momentum and Win the Race for Malaria Elimination

Dakar, Senegal / Basel, Switzerland, July 13, 2016 /3BL Media/ – Novartis convenes the 15^th Annual National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) Best Practice Sharing Workshop today in Dakar, Senegal. Over the next two days, leading malaria experts and African leaders will discuss how to take on the challenge to win the race for malaria elimination.

Representatives from academia, civil society, the donor community and the public sector from 33 African countries will share knowledge and best practices to help accelerate elimination efforts across the continent.

“I’m delighted that Senegal has been chosen to host this year’s NMCP Best Practice Sharing Workshop because it gives our colleagues across Africa the opportunity to see the pioneering work undertaken by community volunteers,” said Awa Coll-Seck, Minister of Health of Senegal. “The country has witnessed huge declines in malaria incidence and deaths over the past five years, thanks to extensive malaria control interventions. We are confident our country can achieve complete elimination by 2030, along with the rest of the African continent.”

While malaria deaths have declined by around 60% since 2000, with 6 million lives saved,¹ major new challenges have surfaced, including growing resistance to frontline artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) and insecticides.² Although preventable and treatable, malaria continues to kill a child every two minutes and threatens the lives of many more.³

This year’s event will focus on key issues including efficacy and quality monitoring of existing therapies, the growing tide of resistance in Asia and its potential effect on African countries. Host country Senegal has already proven to be a leader in home-based malaria management through the use of rapid diagnostic tests administered by community volunteers, and lessons from this success will also be shared.    

“Novartis is proud to convene this unique forum and bring together leading voices from across Africa to advance malaria elimination efforts,” said Dr. Harald Nusser, Global Head, Novartis Malaria Initiative and Novartis Access. “Despite the many advances in the fight against the disease, we know there is still a lot to be done if we want to achieve a malaria-free world. Bridging existing gaps in access to key interventions and introducing novel tools, including next-generation antimalarial drugs, will be crucial to achieving elimination.”

Delegates will also have the opportunity to meet community volunteers in a semi-rural area; attend public disease awareness sessions; hear from Global Fund representatives about the global replenishment drive to further mobilize efforts to end malaria; and hear plans for the Novartis SMS for Life 2.0 pilot – a project which uses mobile phones and online tools to improve access to malaria medicines and quality of care.

The NMCP workshop is happening as the Novartis Malaria Initiative celebrates a new treatment delivery milestone. Since 2001, Novartis has delivered more than 800 million treatments without profit, including over 300 million dispersible pediatric treatments developed in collaboration with the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), mostly to the public sector of malaria-endemic countries. Novartis recently announced an expanded partnership with MMV to further drive the development of KAF156, the first in a new class of dual-acting antimalarial compounds known as imidazolepiperazines (IZPs) that target the parasite at both the liver and blood stages of its reproductive cycle.

The NMCP Best Practice Sharing Workshop is co-chaired by Dr. Moustapha Cisse, Deputy NMCP Head in Senegal; Simone Kunene, Under Secretary of the Swaziland Ministry of Health and a former Head of the Swaziland NMCP; and Professor Zul Premji, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology at Aga Khan University.

About the Novartis Malaria Initiative
The Novartis Malaria Initiative is committed to drive research, development and access to novel drugs to eliminate malaria. Operated by Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, the Novartis Malaria Initiative is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s largest access-to-medicine programs. Since 2001, the initiative has delivered more than 800 million treatments without profit, including over 300 million dispersible pediatric treatments, mostly to the public sector of malaria-endemic countries.

Novartis has a long heritage in antimalarial drug development. Coartem^®, the first fixed-dose Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT), was launched in 1999. ACTs are the current standard of care in malaria treatment. Currently, there are two potential antimalarial therapies in Phase II clinical trials in the Novartis pipeline, KAE609 and KAF156. Both are new classes of compounds that treat malaria in different ways from current therapies, and could help combat growing resistance to existing artemisinin-based combination therapies.

In 2009, the Novartis Malaria Initiative spearheaded SMS for Life to manage stock-outs of malaria medicines in sub-Saharan countries. A new enhanced version of this award-winning program, called SMS for Life 2.0, uses tablet computers to track more stock items and more disease surveillance indicators. The platform will also be used to deliver high-quality training directly to health workers at their health facility.

Disclaimer
This press release contains expressed or implied forward-looking statements, including statements that can be identified by terminology such as “to accelerate,” “will,” “confident,” “continues to,” “potential,” “next-generation,” “to further drive,” “committed,” “pipeline,” “could,” “would,” or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of the Group regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such statements. These expectations could be affected by, among other things, risks and factors referred to in the Risk Factors section of Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update it in the future.

About Novartis
Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2015, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.4 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 8.9 billion (USD 8.7 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

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References

1. Fact Sheet: World Malaria Report 2015. (2015, December 9). World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world-malaria-report-2015/en/. Last accessed April 2016.
2. Bansal, S. (2016, March 29). The Unrelenting Specter of Drug-Resistant Malaria. Medium. https://medium.com/the-development-set/the-unrelenting-specter-of-drug-resistant-malaria-da11f736c973#.3vjhqv4lg. Last accessed April 2016.
3. World Health Organization, World Malaria Report 2015: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/200018/1/9789241565158_eng.pdf?ua=1. Last accessed January 2016. 

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