Drug-resistant malaria spreading in Asia, experts warn

"Drug-resistant malaria is spreading in Asia, experts warned as a high-level conference opened Wednesday with the aim of hammering out an action plan to strengthen the region's response," Agence France-Presse reports. "Resistance to the drug used everywhere to cure the life-threatening disease has emerged in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar," Richard Feachem, director of global health at the University of California, San Francisco and former head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said, according to the news service. "The danger is that at some time this resistance may break out of Southeast Asia and crop up in Africa," he added, AFP writes. Feachem spoke ahead of the "Malaria 2012: Saving Lives in the Asia-Pacific" conference in Sydney, which "will seek consensus on the actions needed to strengthen the region's response to malaria," according to AFP (Coorey, 10/31).