New form of malaria threatens Thai-Cambodia border

This Aug. 27, 2009 photo shows stacks of expired malaria medication in an NGO's village office near Pailin, Cambodia. Malaria parasites in the Thai-Cambodia area of Pailin, Cambodia have become resistant to artemisinin-based therapies according to Non Governmental Agencies working in the region. 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. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

This Aug. 28, 2009 photo shows malaria researcher Sornsuda Setaphan preparing blood samples at the hospital in Pailin, Cambodia. Malaria parasites in the Thai-Cambodia area of Pailin, Cambodia have become resistant to artemisinin-based therapies according to Non Governmental Agencies working in the region. 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. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

This Aug. 29, 2009 photo shows Cambodian Hoeun Hong Da, 13, still recovering from an attack of malaria, smiling as he arrives home with a new mosquito resistant bed net as he arrives at O'treng village on the outskirts of Pailin, Cambodia. 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. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

This Aug. 29, 2009 photo shows Chhay Meth, 9, suffering through an attack of malaria at the family's home in O'treng village on the outskirts of Pailin, Cambodia. 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. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

2009-12-28
By MARGIE MASON and MARTHA MENDOZA,
Associated Press Writers
Associated Press

EDITOR'S NOTE: Once curable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria are rapidly mutating into aggressive strains that resist drugs. The reason: The misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us has built up drug resistance worldwide. Second in a five-part series.

PAILIN, Cambodia (AP) - O'treng village does not look like the epicenter of anything.

Just off a muddy, rutted-out road, it is nothing more than a handful of Khmer-style bamboo huts perched crookedly on stilts, tucked among a tangle of cornfields once littered with deadly land mines.

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.

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