Scientists, health officials increasing efforts to fight apread of drug-resistant malaria along Thai-Cambodian border

Scientists and health officials are increasing efforts to curb a drug-resistant malaria strain along the Thai-Cambodian border that is becoming increasingly resistant to artemisinin, an ingredient in artemisinin-based combination therapies, IRIN News reports.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded a $22.5 million grant to the World Health Organization to help control the spread of drug-resistant malaria in the region.

The Wellcome Trust-Mahidol University-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Program, or MORU, is working to determine the "biological basis" for the increasing drug resistance, Arjen Dondorp, deputy director of MORU, said. Health officials and nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia and Thailand also are increasing efforts to address drug-resistant malaria. The Thai government has established 500 malaria clinics and created a national task force to address the situation. In addition, Thailand has 460 malaria posts supported by the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria where local residents are trained to detect malaria and provide treatment, Wichai Satimai, director of the vectorborne disease bureau at the Thai Ministry of Public Health, said. Authorities also are increasing efforts to prevent sales of counterfeit malaria drugs, IRIN News reports.

Wichai said that the "pattern of resistance is mostly from the east next to Cambodia, to the west, next to Myanmar," adding that health officials are "quite worried about the control measures in nearby countries." Eva-Maria Christophel, a WHO medical officer in the Western Pacific region, said, "To prevent the spread of this (parasite), we need to be fast." Dondorp added, "It's sort of a time bomb, so you never know when the parasite is going to escape from western Cambodia and spread to the rest of the world" (IRIN News, 3/26).