Millions At Risk As Malaria Drug Loses Potency

A deadly form of malaria has developed a resistance to the most
powerful drugs used to treat the disease, putting the lives of
millions of people around the world at risk.
Experts have warned that the disease could be spreading after a strain
of Plasmodium falciparum was discovered on the border of Thailand and
Burma - 500 miles from western Cambodia, where the first cases of the
parasite were reported in 2009.
Tests by a team of British and Thai scientists over a 10-year period
have found that the most dangerous species of malaria parasites,
spread by mosquitoes, are becoming more resistant to the most
effective treatments containing artemisinin, a drug derived from the
sweet wormwood shrub.
The details of their findings and research have been published in The
Lancet medical journal.
They show that between 2001 and 2010, the average time taken to reduce
the number of parasites in the blood by half rose from 2.6 hours to
3.7 hours.
The proportion of slow-clearing infections increased during the same
period from six to 200 out of every 1,000 cases.
Study leader Professor Francois Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria
Research Unit in Thailand, warned of a "race against time" to halt the
spread of the potentially untreatable malaria.
He said: "We have now seen the emergence of malaria resistant to our
best drugs, and these resistant parasites are not confined to western
Cambodia.
"This is very worrying indeed and suggests that we are in a race
against time to control malaria in these regions before drug
resistance worsens and develops and spreads further. The effect of
that happening could be devastating.
"Malaria already kills hundreds of thousands of people a year - if our
drugs become ineffective, this figure will rise dramatically," he
added.
In 2010, malaria killed an estimated 655,000 people worldwide, mostly
young children and pregnant women.