Cipla said Tuesday it would join a group of other Indian pharmaceutical companies in complying with a World Health Organization recommendation to phase out single-drug artemisinin, an oral treatment for malaria.

The company, which is India’s leading generics drugmaker, said the decision would not affect its business.

“The impact on revenues and profitability will be very small and minimal,” Amar Lulla, joint-managing director of Cipla, told reporters in New Delhi. Cipla already makes artemisinin combination therapies (ACT) drugs, which have been recommended by the WHO.

Earlier this year, the WHO called on all pharmaceutical companies to stop marketing single-drug artemisinin, a key anti-malarial drug, fearing that the malarial parasite would develop resistance to the drug if used widely and without other anti-malarial compounds.

Instead, the WHO recommended ACT, where other anti-malarial drugs are administered with artemisinin and the regimen is 95 percent effective. This combination also makes it highly unlikely for the parasite to develop resistance as it cannot become resistant to multiple drugs at the same time.

ACT is slightly more expensive than a single-drug treatment, but the course of treatment is shorter. While the former takes three days to administer, the latter course lasts seven days, leading to higher dropout rates and lower success rates.

Compliance Intentions

Geneva-based WHO has identified 40 companies producing drugs for artemisinin monotherapies. Of these, 13 drug companies, including the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis and Cipla, along with two other Indian companies, have announced their intention to phase out single-drug artemisinin.

But 27 other companies have yet to disclose their intention to comply with the WHO recommendation.

“Out of these 27, there are eight Indian companies which have yet to disclose their intention on the WHO recommendations,” a WHO spokesperson told the media persons from Geneva. Cipla, along with IPCA Labs and Ajanta Pharmaceuticals, have been the first movers in India. The other eight companies that have yet to announce compliance are Activa Pharmaceuticals, Alchem International, Allied Chemicals, GVS Laboratories, Morepan Labs, Shalina Labs, Skymax Labs, and Themis Medicare.

Announcing the compliance of 13 drug companies in New York last week, WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-Wook said that in the last three months there had been “significant progress toward curbing the supply of inappropriate and clinically unsound malaria treatments.”

According to WHO estimates, between 350 million to 500 million new cases of malaria are detected every year and more than 1 million people die from the disease.