Malaria Disaster Looms - Bug's Resistance, China Fakes

[churchill]

"Saron Samnith, 14, slouches in the doorway of his family’s thatched hut off a dusty track near Pailin, a city in western Cambodia. He has chills, diarrhea and a three-day-old headache -- signs of malaria.

The bout of the mosquito-borne disease, for which he tested positive, is his second in a month. The first left him comatose and in danger of dying, before medicines curbed the attack. Coursing through Saron’s veins may be the strain so dangerous that health officials --and the billionaire Bill Gates -- are racing to stop it from spreading before it kills millions.

In Pailin, a flood of counterfeit pills from China and elsewhere is helping to breed a superbug that resists even the most-effective medicine. The development threatens to unleash a global malaria “disaster” and undo decades of work to reduce illness, destitution and death, said Arjen Dondorp, a Thailand- based researcher.

“It’s a time bomb,” said Dondorp, the deputy director of the Wellcome Trust-Mahidol University Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme, with headquarters in Bangkok. "

......

"The risk of failure raises what Dorndop calls a “doom scenario.” In that sequence of events, migrant workers would first carry the bug to Thailand, Myanmar and India. Later the strain would spread to Africa, which already has 90 percent of the world’s malaria cases.

“We rang the warning bell in 2005 and nobody believed us,” said Pascal Ringwald, the Geneva-based WHO’s leading specialist in the malaria parasite’s ability to resist drugs. “Many people were skeptical.”

The doom scenario may be a decade away from materializing, giving the world time to prevent it, said Charles Delacollette, the head of WHO’s Mekong Malaria Programme, which covers Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and part of China.

“We don’t have many alternatives” to the antimalarial drug artemisinin, to which the parasite is becoming resistant in western Cambodia, Delacollette said in an interview in Bangkok. “That drug should be protected.” "

continued at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...refer=exclusive

[churchill]

From the same article - Counterfeit drugs are being sold in Thailand which could lead to a resistant form of Malaria

"Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France, traced counterfeit drugs in Southeast Asia to China in 2006 as part of an investigation called Operation Jupiter. Last year, under Operation Storm, Interpol arrested 27 people in raids across Asia and seized more than 16 million fake pills valued at almost $7 million.

Chemical analysis of pills bought in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam found several other pharmaceutical ingredients, charcoal, and a precursor of the illicit drug ecstasy, according to an account of Operation Jupiter published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine. Also present were spores and pollen from trees common in southern China, suggesting that at least some of the drugs were made there, the authors said.

“The evidence we have at the moment suggests China and India are sources of fake medicines, including in the case of China, fake anti-malarials,” said Paul Newton, a University of Oxford researcher who monitors counterfeit malaria drugs from an office in Vientiane, Laos. "

and

"Murder

“If you make a medicine that contains no active ingredient for a disease you know can be fatal, at best that is manslaughter and at worst it is murder,” Newton said. As many as half of all artesunate pills available at shops in Southeast Asia may be fake, according to studies he has led.

While pills devoid of active ingredients won’t heal patients, those containing small amounts wipe out only the weakest parasites, enabling the hardiest to survive and spread resistance to genuine drugs.

A bigger contributor to drug resistance than counterfeiters is patients who don’t take medicines properly, according to WHO scientists. "

[churchill]

Malaria parasites 'resist drugs'

"International scientists say they have found the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drug for treating malaria.

They say the trend in western Cambodia has to be urgently contained because full-blown resistance would be a global health catastrophe.

Drugs are taking longer to clear blood of malaria parasites than before.

This is an early warning sign of emerging resistance to a disease which kills a million people every year.

Until now the most effective drug cleared all malaria parasites from the blood within two or three days but in recent trials this took up to four or five days."

"Cambodia has long been a laboratory for malaria investigators and a nursery of anti-malaria drug resistance.

The fight against malaria has lasted generations

Alongside a weak public health system and poorly-controlled drug use, there are many fake drugs, produced by international criminals.

These fakes often contain a small amount of the real drug to fool tests, which can also help to fuel resistance.

Those working to control malaria are calling for urgent action to contain this emerging resistance.

If it strengthens and spreads, they warn, many millions of lives will be at risk. About half the world's population faces exposure to the disease."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8073118.stm

-- BBC 29/05/09

[Geekfreaklover]

Crikey, I caught maleria close to the Cambodia border a couple of years ago. I was given a Chinese medicine extracted from a flower that was supposed to kill the germ. sounds like the same medicine.

[bkkjames]

Crikey, I caught maleria close to the Cambodia border a couple of years ago. I was given a Chinese medicine extracted from a flower that was supposed to kill the germ. sounds like the same medicine.

and yet, apparently, you are still alive.

[bonobo]

Crikey, I caught maleria close to the Cambodia border a couple of years ago. I was given a Chinese medicine extracted from a flower that was supposed to kill the germ. sounds like the same medicine.

Unfortunately for you, malaria can relapse or recrudesce if the previous treatment was not 100% effective. I would get a professional check up to see if you were fully cured or not.

[Geekfreaklover]

Crikey, I caught maleria close to the Cambodia border a couple of years ago. I was given a Chinese medicine extracted from a flower that was supposed to kill the germ. sounds like the same medicine.

and yet, apparently, you are still alive.

Apparently so, it would seem. Thanks for your concern.

I won't bother to explain the nature of the disease in full, but basically after the first attack a germ remains within the liver and can reoccur at any moment. The new chinese medicine was supposed to stop it reoccuring. From what I read above its not working in thailand, hence my concern.

Maleria, aint really a laughing matter.

Edited May 29, 2009 by Geekfreaklover

[sanook2me]

Churchill - You just make my day go so much happier with your factual fun posts. Not

You must be a funny guy

[bonobo]

Maleria, aint really a laughing matter.

You are right, it sure isn't.  This is quite serious for the population at large (over a million people die each year from the disease) and for you in particular.  Please get checked.

[bravingbangkok]

fuc_k getting Malaria !

[Geekfreaklover]

fuc_k getting Malaria !

Yes, best avoided. It's kind of like being thrown from the freezer to the oven whilst being on the most intense bad LSD trip for a week. Managed to lose 10 kilos in wieght though.

[bravingbangkok]

fuc_k getting Malaria !

Yes, best avoided. It's kind of like being thrown from the freezer to the oven whilst being on the most intense bad LSD trip for a week. Managed to lose 10 kilos in wieght though.

I know what you mean, I had salmonella once, very nasty. Could not even stand up.

[Scott]

More bad news on the health front. I know something will get me eventually--but it seems that the old ones I didn't expect are moving to the front of the list.

[TerryLH]

"...seized more than 16 million fake pills valued at almost $7 million."

That's a pretty high value for fake pills. Can I assume they mean that's the value if the pills were real?

I think that over the years mosquitos have become resistant to a number of medicines.

[Crushdepth]

The underlying problem is not malaria, its the rampant abuse of anti-malarial drugs prevalent in the region. Doctors hand out antibiotics like candy without any attempt at diagnosis or follow up supervision. As a result, the drugs are becoming ineffective.

[dudemeister]

The underlying problem is not malaria, its the rampant abuse of anti-malarial drugs prevalent in the region. Doctors hand out antibiotics like candy without any attempt at diagnosis or follow up supervision. As a result, the drugs are becoming ineffective.

and i've noticed my latest supply of chinese 'viagra' isnt passing the test!

[churchill]

Gender-bending bugs could tackle mosquito plagues

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2022...to-plagues.html

[bonobo]

The underlying problem is not malaria, its the rampant abuse of anti-malarial drugs prevalent in the region. Doctors hand out antibiotics like candy without any attempt at diagnosis or follow up supervision. As a result, the drugs are becoming ineffective.

I had a business dinner with an Australian and two Thais Wednesday night.  When the Australian complained of a minor sore throat, one of the Thais immediately offered tot send his driver to go pick up some antibiotics.  He was amazed when the Australain delcined, and even more amazed when we both told him that in our respective homelands, you can get antibiotics only with a prescripton, and that doctors are becoming more wary about casual prescriptions. This Thai was a highly educated man, a CEO of a large company.  BUt he had never heard of the perils of overuse of antibiotics. He said he regularly bought them over the counter for any number of ailments, then took them until the ailments went away.

 

[roamer]

Crikey, I caught maleria close to the Cambodia border a couple of years ago. I was given a Chinese medicine extracted from a flower that was supposed to kill the germ. sounds like the same medicine.

and yet, apparently, you are still alive.

Apparently so, it would seem. Thanks for your concern.

I won't bother to explain the nature of the disease in full, but basically after the first attack a germ remains within the liver and can reoccur at any moment. The new chinese medicine was supposed to stop it reoccuring. From what I read above its not working in thailand, hence my concern.

Maleria, aint really a laughing matter.

Artemesinin is the treatment you are talking about. Certainly two years ago it would have worked if taken in the correct dosage, if your concerned you go and take a blood test, no parasites present, it worked.

looming problem though, for sure resistance to this would always develop if it could just be bought on an ad hoc basis . Despite what you think you have read it still works, simply takes longer to work which is a sign of increasing resistance, continue on this path and it will be useless within a very short space of time.

[Spee]

Malaria parasites 'resist drugs'

"International scientists say they have found the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drug for treating malaria.

Some people can't see the forest for the <deleted>' trees.

<deleted> all that crap about mosquitoes developing resistance to man-made drugs.

Go take all those tree-hugging maggots whose protests intimidated judges and politicans into outlawing DDT to the back yard and show them the business end of an Uzi.

At the very least, they, the politicians and the judges ought to be guilty of involuntary manslaughter of tens of millions of fellow human beings for their false rantings and misrepresentations of DDT in the courts.

Malaria was all but eliminated world-wide in the days when DDT was in widespread use. Now malaria is reaching epidemic proportions again and killing tens of thousands annually.

Why this blatant example of enviro-wacko selfishness causing innocents to suffer a brutal agony and death, is not viewed as an unmitigated disaster and reversed immediately to once again allow the use of DDT worldwide, is just further example of human stupidity and the kind of cruelty that humans are capable of inflicting to each other.

[Shotime]

The underlying problem is not malaria, its the rampant abuse of anti-malarial drugs prevalent in the region. Doctors hand out antibiotics like candy without any attempt at diagnosis or follow up supervision. As a result, the drugs are becoming ineffective.

and i've noticed my latest supply of chinese 'viagra' isnt passing the test!

Dude, you didn't think somefin was up (or not) from the price?

This is in addition to the swine flu?

Someone said to me today "dude, it's the AIDs era" or something similar.

Edited May 29, 2009 by Shotime

[colibra]

check this stuff out for malaria. works

http://jimhumble.biz/

MMS sodium chlorite