SwastiChemEx: MALARIA THREAT

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

MALARIA THREAT

Another World Malaria Day passed away on April 25 with expressions of concerns and commitments by international bodies and governments of affected countries. The World Health Organization urged for more investments towards malaria control and elimination programmes in the poor countries. Three out of four people are at risk of malaria in South-East Asia Region, home to a quarter of the world's population.

Global efforts to control and eliminate malaria have saved a total of 3.3 million lives so far. According to the WHO’s World Malaria Report, 2013, deaths caused by malaria came down by 42% globally between 2000 and 2012 and the incidence of malaria decreased by 25%. But the whatever gains in malaria control could be reversed due to increasing parasite resistance to drugs, mosquito resistance to insecticides and re-emergence of transmission in places where the disease has been eliminated. Now, the emergence of artemisinin resistance in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam threatens the global achievements in malaria control and its elimination.


Artemisinin-based combination treatment is currently the first line treatment for the most lethal type of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum and resistance to this drug would compromise the lives of hundreds of thousands of people affected by malaria. Another danger lies in the fact that the Anopheles mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites are increasingly become resistant to insecticides

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