The Clinton Foundation announced Thursday that it had brokered an agreement among several drug makers that it hopes will assure a steady supply of a crucial malaria medicine at reasonable prices for the world’s poor... In 2004, when international donors agreed to pay for artemisinin-based drug cocktails, the price of the raw material soared... Novartis, then the only company with an artemisinin-based drug approved by the World Health Organization, absorbed the losses, and generic drug makers were scared away from the field... The complex deal announced Thursday includes two Chinese suppliers of artemisinin, two Indian companies that process it into derivatives like artesunate, and two more Indian companies, Cipla and Ipca Laboratories, that produce finished pills.