2004-5-16
This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English Development
Report.
The United Nations has decided to support a traditional Chinese
medicine as a way to fight malaria. The drug is called artemisinin.
It comes from a plant called the sweet wormwood.
Chinese researchers discovered artemisinin more than thirty years
ago. Tests took place in the early nineteen-nineties in Vietnam. The
country had a malaria crisis at that time. The drug helped reduce
the rate of deaths by ninety-seven percent.
Now, world health agencies are trying to secure
one-hundred-million treatments of artemisinin. In addition, the
Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given money to
eleven countries to buy the drug. It has also told thirty-four other
nations to cancel their requests for two older drugs. Instead, those
nations have been told to order the new drug.
Malaria is caused by parasites.
These organisms are passed to humans through a bite from a mosquito.
Malaria produces high temperatures and causes the body to lose
dangerous amounts of fluid.
The World Health Organization estimates that each year about
three-million people become infected with malaria. About one-million
of them die. Malaria is especially dangerous to children and
pregnant women.
Hundreds of years ago, people in what is now Peru treated the
disease with the bark covering the cinchona tree. Two French
researchers in eighteen-twenty identified the active substance in
the bark as quinine. This became the main drug used to prevent and
cure some forms of malaria.
Today, mostly manufactured drugs are used to prevent the
parasites from developing in the body. The most common ones are
chloroquine and mefloquine. Both must be taken once a week. Another
drug is doxycycline. It must be taken every day.
But treating malaria is difficult. The parasites can develop a
resistance to drugs. Health experts hope to prevent this in the case
of artemisinin by giving it in combination with other medicines.
Experts also warn about the overuse of malaria drugs by people
who do not have the disease. They say that sick people often mistake
influenza or other diseases for malaria and take anti-malarial
medicine. Health experts say greater use of home tests for malaria
could reduce the problem.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill
Moss. This is Robert Cohen.