African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic Why ... - Blackherbals.com

Malaria Builds Resistance,Kills MillionsGLENN McKENZIEAssociated PressSeptember 20, 2003LAGOS, Nigeria - Malaria, the ancient mosquito-bornedisease that was rolled back by medical advances in themid-20th century, is making a deadly comeback.Strains of the disease are becoming increasinglyresistant to treatment, infecting and killing more peoplethan ever before - sickening as many as 900 million lastyear, according to estimates by the U.S. Agency forInternational Development.More than 1 million people - and as many as 2.7million by some estimates - of those victims died. Thevast majority of the deaths were in Africa.Shivering and sweating feverishly, Felicia Egbuchuetook the malaria medicine her doctor prescribed.Although it had cured her in years past, this time itdidn't. She was rushed to the hospital, and hooked up toan intravenous drip."I have no inner strength. I feel like I'm dying," the 30-year-old university student said from her hospital bed.After three days in a private hospital in Nigeria'scommercial capital of Lagos, Egbuchue recovered fromwhat doctors said was a strain that had become resistantto many of the standard treatments."Malaria is something that we thought we hadconquered years ago. But more and more of our peopleare dying from it every day," said Patrick Dike, amalaria specialist at the Lagos hospital.Only AIDS kills more people worldwide. Among children, malaria kills even more than AIDS.The economic cost of malaria is also high - in countriesof Africa, Asia and Latin America where the disease isendemic, the World Health Organization estimates upto $12 billion are lost annually to the disease.Americans traveling abroad also are at risk. Of the 225Marines and Navy forces who went ashore to assistWest African peacekeepers in Liberia, 51 showedsymptoms - an unusually high rate, U.S. officials said.International efforts to contain or even eradicate thedisease have received a boost in recent years withmajor grants from the U.S. government and from the$4.7 billion five-year U.N. Global Fund for Aids,Tuberculosis and Malaria.-22- Traditional African Clinic October 2008The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which hassupported malaria efforts, is also expected to announcenew funding toward malaria medicines, controls andvaccine research this weekend."We hope that malaria gets some additional visibility,"Bill Gates, the Microsoft tycoon, said in a conference callwith journalists. "Of those million people who die,overwhelmingly those are children. ... This is somethingwe should demand more action on."Malaria campaigners complain that despite the increasedfocus, their efforts remain woefully underfunded.Whereas AIDS vaccine research receives $400 million ayear, malaria research receives just $60 million.While donors commit an estimated $200 million eachyear to treating impoverished patients and distributingmosquito nets and insecticides to prevent mosquito bitesthat transmit the disease, experts say they need at least $1billion to make a dent."Malaria has to some extent been forgotten by theinternational community," said Allan Schapira, a seniorofficial in WHO's Rollback Malaria program. "Apartfrom AIDS, it is the single worst child health problemthat we haven't got a grip on."In Nigeria, a nation of 126 million people wheregovernment officials estimate up to one-quarter of theworld's malaria deaths occur, researchers at the nationalNigerian Institute of Medical Research test malariatreatments and other drugs on mice in a single tiny,stiflingly hot laboratory."The resources available in Nigeria for this work arelimited or even nonexistent," research director PhilipAgomo said.A major cause of malaria's alarming resurgence is theparasite's increasing resistance to the drugs used to treatand prevent the disease - including chloroquine, thecheapest and most effective anti-malarial since the 1950s.The number of alternatives are limited. The WHOsupports use of multi-drug combinations based onartemisinin, until recently an extract from the "sweetwormwood" plant used in China for centuries but littleknown in the West.Yet aid agency officials say that artemisinin is not yetproduced in large enough quantities to affordably treatthe large numbers of Africans who need it most.Some governments and Western donors have beenhesitant to promote the treatment widely because of alack of funds - artemisinin is 10 times more expensivethan chloroquine, or between $4.50 and $9 for a threedaytreatment.Continued on page 23