WHO reports progress in fight against drug-resistant malaria

Efforts to eliminate a drug-resistant strain of malaria near the Cambodian-Thai border have shown signs of success, according to the World Health Organization and local health officials. (reported by AFP)

The WHO warned early last year that the emergence of parasites resistant to artemisinin along the Cambodia-Thai border could “seriously undermine” efforts to bring the disease under control.

But initial results from the screening of 2,782 villagers in Cambodia’s Pailin province found only two cases of falciparum malaria, the deadliest type of the disease and the one in which resistance to artemisinin has emerged.

A malaria control project launched last year, has distributed more than half a million mosquito nets and trained and equipped more than 3,000 village malaria workers in diagnosis and treatment on both sides of the border.

The director of Cambodia’s National Centre for Malaria Control, said the results suggested the efforts are “significantly reducing the cases of malaria and could ultimately eliminate the resistant parasites from the area.”

New artemisinin-based medication has been largely credited in recent years for increasing recovery rates from the mosquito-transmitted disease that kills one million people a year, mostly in Africa.

Fighting neglected diseases: anti-TB compounds offer hope

Compounds being developed against tuberculosis also show promise against deadly tropical diseases threatening millions of people.  As reported by Reuters, the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development has granted the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) rights to develop a class of potential anti-TB compounds offering hope of treating Chagas disease, African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis.

Chagas, a disease caused by a parasite found mainly in rural areas of Latin America, kills some 14,000 people annually and an estimated 8 million are infected. Infection is lifelong and can lead to heart disease and heart failure. Some 100 million people are deemed at risk of the disease.

Leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness, formally known as human African trypanosomiasis, each kill roughly 50,000 people a year and pose a threat to a combined total of 400 million people.

The Gates Foundation is providing a $1.5 million grant to DNDi for preclinical assessments of compounds specifically for use against visceral leishmaniasis, a deadly parasitic infection spread by the bite of a sandfly.

Though found in Europe, Asia and Africa, leishmaniasis is most concentrated in India. An estimated 350 million people worldwide are deemed at risk from infection.