Slashdot Mirror
Drug-Resistant Malaria May Pose Major Threat
According to Newsweek, "A strain of drug-resistant malaria that was discovered last summer along the Thailand-Cambodia border has been been spreading throughout Southeast Asia, to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar." Specifically, the samples are resistant to anti-malarial artemisinin.
The study analyzed more than 900 blood samples from malaria patients at over 55 different sites in Myanmar. The results showed that the drug-resistant bug was widespread, and dangerously close to the Indian border in the country’s Sagaing region. "Our study shows that artemisinin resistance extends over more of southeast Asia than had previously been known, and is now present close to the border with India,” wrote the researchers in the study abstract.
Indeed, major pandemics have been documented throughout the last 2000 years. Air travel today, just means they happen much faster.
The average person thinks modern medicine and hospitals can "take care of everything" but plans can't be made when a pandemic strikes 20 or 25% of the population who all want to go to the hospital in the same time period.
The WWI-1918 "Spanish Flu" was perhaps the last major pandemic, infecting 1 out of 3 people in the world and killing 10% of the world's population in about 18 months.
You do realize that Malaria is a protozoan, not a bacteria, and definitely not a virus. Vaccines are only for viruses - to prime your immune system to react and eradicate the virus when it encounters it, not to treat the infection. Not for bacteria and definitely not for protozoan. Antibiotics are for the *treatment* of bacterial infections and are not a preventative (cleanliness is the preventative). Protozoan, like Malaria, treatments are basically toxins/poisons that are poisonous to the protozoan more than they are poisonous to you (like Quinine). So, what does "Anti-Vaxxers" have to do with it? Throwing things like that out just gives the anti-sciece crowd ammunition.
Here's the article I was thinking about. From the conclusion:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
Artemisinin Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum Malaria
Arjen M. Dondorp, M.D., François Nosten, M.D., Poravuth Yi, M.D., et al.
N Engl J Med 2009; 361:455-467
July 30, 2009
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0808859
[Free]
Chloroquine and sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine resistance in P. falciparum emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s on the Thai–Cambodian border and spread across Asia and then Africa, contributing to millions of deaths from malaria.28,29 Artemisinins have been available as monotherapies in western Cambodia for more than 30 years, in a variety of forms and doses, whereas in most countries (other than China, where they were discovered), they have been a relatively recent introduction.1 Despite the early implementation of an active malaria-control program by the Ministry of Health of Cambodia, including the introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapies in 2001, a recent survey showed that 78% of artemisinin use in western Cambodia consisted of monotherapy provided through the private sector.30 The extended period of often-suboptimal use, and the genetic background of parasites from this region,31 might have contributed to the emergence and subsequent spread of these new artemisinin-resistant parasites in western Cambodia. In contrast, artemisinin derivatives have been used almost exclusively in combination with mefloquine on the Thai–Burmese border, where parasitologic responses to artemisinins remain good, even after 15 years of intensive use.27 Measures for containment are now urgently needed to limit the spread of these parasites from western Cambodia and to prevent a major threat to current plans for eliminating malaria.