Drug-resistant malaria has spread across Southeast Asia
Resistance to the world's most effective anti-malarial drug, artemisinin, is now widespread across mainland Southeast Asia, seriously threatening global malaria control and elimination, according to a study led by Oxford University researchers based in Thailand.
The study, which analysed blood samples from 1241 malaria patients in 10 countries across Asia and Africa, found that artemisinin resistance in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is now firmly established in Western Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Eastern Myanmar and Northern Cambodia. There are also signs of emerging resistance in Central Myanmar, Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia.
Reassuringly, there are no signs of resistance in the three African sites included in the study: in Kenya, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The study also suggests that extending the course of antimalarial treatment in areas with established resistance – for six days rather than the standard three days – could offer a temporary solution to this worsening problem.
'It may still be possible to prevent the spread of artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites across Asia and then to Africa by eliminating them, but that window of opportunity is closing fast,' says senior author Professor Nicholas White, Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford and Chair of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network. 'Conventional malaria control approaches won't be enough – we will need to take more radical action and make this a global public health priority without delay.'
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http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-07-31-drug-resistant-malaria-has-spread-across-southeast-asia
