Costs of poor forecasting = 10 million antimalarials

Like the boy who cried wolf, the international public health community has a serious credibility problem: estimates of demand for antimalarial drugs have once again proven to be wildly optimistic, leaving the manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis, holding 10 million tablets of artesunate that were produced but not purchased within the "sell by" date. Now, Sanofi has two bad options: throw them away or give them away - if they can find any takers. For those working for greater engagement by commercial pharmaceutical firms in developing country markets, this is not the stuff of which good business cases are made.

As Andrew Jack reports in the Financial Times (subscription required), this is not the first false alarm. Over the past two years, official forecasts of demand for the Novartis antimalarial, Coartem, have been off by orders of magnitude: "Demand remains half of what was projected," says Novartis CEO Dan Vasella. For products that have long lead times and short shelf lives, weak forecasting wastes money and erodes good will.

Admittedly, the difficulties of forecasting demand are significant: poor information, uncertain donor and domestic financing, and unpredictable in-country decisions about introduction and product choices. But these challenges are not insurmountable and merit specific attention and collective efforts to create the credible, useful forecasts and risk sharing that will reinforce, rather than undermine, progress toward better medicine for more people.