Drug-resistant malaria gains foothold in Cambodia

Hundreds of health workers are moving from village to village, testing everybody, in a pre-emptive strike to try to find, treat and monitor those with malaria symptoms.

1/23/2011
Catholic Online

Doctors frantic to contain new strain in Southeast Asia

The humid, swampy atmosphere of Cambodia is the perfect breeding spot for mosquitoes, traditionally the carrier of the deadly disease malaria. A new strain of drug-resistant malaria has gained a foothold in the region, in particular the area between Cambodia and Thailand, and doctors are frantic to find a cure before the disease has a chance to spread.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Every major anti-malarial drug has failed to quell the epidemic since it first took hold. History has proven that once resistance emerges, it can quickly spread worldwide, rendering the drugs useless in the fight against a mosquito-borne parasite. Malaria still kills nearly a million people worldwide each year, most of them in Africa.

"We've got to contain the parasite before it spreads throughout the region. If that happens it's going to be a public health emergency," Dr. Najibullah Habib, spearheading the containment project on behalf of the World Health Organization says.

Hundreds of health workers are moving from village to village, testing everybody, in a pre-emptive strike to try to find, treat and monitor those with malaria symptoms.

"If we lose this first-line drug, this Artemisinin, then we are lost," Christopher Raymond, an American drug specialist working with the project says. He said that as of today there is no good backup if malaria becomes Artemisinin-resistant.

The crisis was first identified by U.S. Army researchers, who showed that in the border areas, Artemisinin was taking far longer to clear malaria than in the past.

"It was clear that the parasites are becoming less susceptible to the drug," David Saunders of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences says. AFRIMS has now extended its study further along the border.

Researchers say there is still time to dig in heels, and working with Cambodian health officials their aim now is to see if it is spreading, how fast, and to test different combinations of drugs to fight it.

Experts speculate that conflict, poverty and a lot of migrants moving across the border have all played a part. Resistance also spreads when people don't take drugs properly, and counterfeit and sub-standard drugs are also to blame. They have been rife in the border areas.