On Thai-Cambodian Border, Malaria Emerging That Resists Artemisinin - Last Drug Poor Can Afford

[hatrack]

EDIT

Yet this spot on the Thai-Cambodian border is home to a form of malaria that keeps rendering one powerful drug after another useless. This time, scientists have confirmed the first signs of resistance to the only affordable treatment left in the global medicine cabinet for malaria: Artemisinin. If this drug stops working, there's no good replacement to combat a disease that kills 1 million annually. As a result, earlier this year international medical leaders declared resistant malaria here a health emergency.

"This is not business as usual. It's something really special and it needs a real concerted effort," said Dr. Nick White, a malaria expert at Mahidol University in Bangkok who has spent decades trying to eradicate the disease from Southeast Asia. "We know that children have been dying in Africa — millions of children have died over the past three decades — and a lot of those deaths have been attributed to drug resistance. And we know that the drug resistance came from the same place."

Malaria is just one of the leading killer infectious diseases battling back in a new and more deadly form, the AP found in a six-month look at the soaring rates of drug resistance worldwide. After decades of the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and staph have started to mutate. The result: The drugs are slowly dying.

Already, The Associated Press found, resistance to malaria has spread faster and wider than previously documented. Dr. White said virtually every case of malaria he sees in western Cambodia is now resistant to drugs. And in the Pailin area, patients given artemisinin take twice as long as those elsewhere to be clear of the parasite — 84 hours instead of the typical 48, and sometimes even 96.

EDIT

http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-when-drugs-stop-working-malaria-fights-back,0,4291000.story

[grantcart]

1. I talked with doctors who were working on this problem 30 years ago

This is terrible terrible news, although Malaria eradication efforts in developing and urban areas seem to remain effective.

[mike_c]

2. that didn't take long....

Not surprising. This is a bad development, but even worse when viewed in perspective-- much of what we've achieved in pathogen control has led to evolution of stronger, more virulent pathogens. In the case of malaria, vector control has always been more efficient, IMO, although it has its own set of pitfall, including mosquito resistance to insecticides.

[Javaman]

3. Check out the movie, "the constant gardener".

frankly, I think the drug resistant whatever out there was done willfully.

pharma's only make money when they brainwash the public into believing that 1) there old meds don't work 2) we should fear for our lives more than ever and lastly 3) buy our drugs, they will save you!!

as long as they keep pumping this crap into society, the bugs will become more and more resistant until, like the new TB strain, there are no drugs to cover it. But make us believe that their lasted publicly tested (no more lab tests, that's for wimps!) bullshit blue pill of the week, will fix everything...with a list of side effects a mile long in teeny tiny small print at the bottom of the label.

We have created a witches brew of drug resistant crap that will, with no doubt in my mind, bite us, in a massive way, in the ass.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

More eye of newt for you?