Friday, 06 July 2012
Ron Corben, VOA | Bangkok
“But the drug still eventually cures people but it just takes a lot more time.”
BANGKOK — Health ministers from the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) are being asked to support United Nations efforts to
stem the spread of drug-resistant strains of malaria, especially along
the borders of Cambodia and Burma.
Scientists fear resistant strains of malaria may spread beyond South
East Asia, reaching continents such as Africa, a region with many
victims of the mosquito-borne parasite.
Thomas Teuscher, executive director of the United Nations-backed Roll
Back Malaria Partnership (RBM), says more effort is needed to ensure
that drug-resistant malaria at least remains localized in South East
Asia.
“Right now we need to intensify our attention and action in a way to
keep the world safe from malaria epidemics in the future by making sure
the medicines we use at present remain useful for as long as possible –
so the topic of containing the spread of drug resistance in the Great
Mekong Region,” Teuscher said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) – a key supporter in RBM –
together with the World Bank and United Nations agencies, says malaria
threatens 2.2 billion people in 20 countries across the Asia Pacific
region with 330 million at risk in the ASEAN countries alone.
In 2010 the Asia Pacific region had 28 million cases of malaria with
38,000 lives lost. Over 90 per cent of the deaths occurred in India,
Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.
Health officials have been alarmed by the growing numbers of malaria
patients in Thailand and Cambodia and in the border regions of Malaysia.
Scientists blame the consumption of single-use drugs and sales of
fake drugs as the key reasons for the growing drug resistance. Teuscher
says the concerns are growing that drug treatments will fail at some
point.
“At present it is the threat of drug resistance – to site the World
Health Organization correctly – it takes more time to clear the parasite
in the blood of malaria patients at present. But the drug still
eventually cures people but it just takes a lot more time. So that is a
strong indication that the drug might at some point not work at all
anymore.”
Teuscher called for more cross border cooperation to contain the
threat of drug-resistant malaria from spreading. But he says to succeed
it requires “perfect case” management of all malaria fevers, avoidance
of mono-therapies and careful monitoring.
He is hopeful with sufficient resources malaria may eventually be wiped out.
“We can go very far and it is mostly an issue of political commitment
to deploy that vision at the strategic background in the right place of
course and to then mobilize a broad range of financial and human
resources to make that happen,” Teuscher added. “It is possible, if I
were young, one could probably say with an effort, this commitment, we
can achieve it over the next 30 years, but it requires harmonized
vision.”
The two days of meetings in Phuket, Thailand are set to conclude
Friday with discussions also on control of chronic non-communicable
diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung
diseases.
Other topics are universal health care, tobacco controls, the spread
of the AIDS virus in urban areas as well as emergency disaster
management.
ASEAN health ministers and officials are being joined in the talks with ministers from China, Japan and South Korea.
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