WHO Worst Fears Realized: Drug Resistant Malaria Found in Second Location
Early warning signs suggest spread of an artemisinin-resistant strain of malaria to the Thai-Myanmar border.
Charles Delacollette, coordinator of the WHO’s Bangkok-based Mekong Malaria Programme, said, “what we are seeing along the Thai-Myanmar border seems equally serious … to what we had at the Thai-Cambodian one,” reports IRIN, the news service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
According to The World Health Organization, malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Myanmar, and a leading cause of death in children under five.
Evidence of resistance to artemisinin based treatments has been well documented by the World Health Organization along the borders of Cambodia and Thailand. World response to this crisis has been lead by international donors like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who donated $22 million in 2009 for malaria treatment and prevention.
International efforts and Cambodian government officials have routed counterfeit medications from the market, one of the leading causes of the artemisinin-resistant strain, and tried to monitor effective use of appropriate dose and treatment plans to wipe out this new strain before it spreads.
Unfortunately, Myanmar is struggling to get needed funds and support to scale up malaria control operations. Says Delacollette, “The situation is not good in some areas of eastern Myanmar, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced [due to ethnic conflict].”
Political conflicts cause migrations of people which prevents them from being monitored effective by health workers and counterfeit and substandard medications aid in inoculating the parasite to available treatments.
The Global Fund has responded by committing $19 million to fight the new strain of malaria in Myanmar, and the Three Diseases Fund and the Gates Foundation have pledged $12 million to fund the new artemisinin-resistance containment strategy.