Malaria parasite: Urgent action is needed as drugs can no longer cure malaria

Scientists must issue an urgent warning that millions of lives are at risk unless urgent and radical action is taken to stop the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa.

Malaria parasites are susceptible to the effects of the critical drug artemisinin, which is important for East Africa.

In some areas, the level of resistance increases from 1% to about 20% of cases within three years.

The last time malaria was prescribed for medication the number of people dying tripled.

Artemisinin kills malaria parasites and helps in treatment.

Parasites containing artemisinin first appeared in Africa in Rwanda and then developed separately in Uganda and Eritrea.

Disresistant parasites do not spread within continents or cross national borders.

In Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, more than 10% of all malaria cases are now caused by resistant parasites.

“Now is the time to act for millions of patients as malaria treatments become increasingly ineffective,” says Prof. Olugbenga Mokuolu of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria.

In 2016, resistant strains were rare in northern Uganda. In 2019, more than 20% of parasites tested were resistant in many regions.

The group of scientists assumes that the further spread of these resistant parasites cannot be stopped.

Dr. Mehul Dhorda of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Thailand told me it is not clear how quickly this is happening.

But something similar has already happened in Southeast Asia: artemisinin-based treatments are beginning to fail.

He says: “The time from their first discovery to their final end of life is 10 to 15 years.”

This has happened before. Malaria began to be controlled in East Africa in the 1970s with a drug called chloroquine, and by the 1980s resistance had reached the West Coast.

The number of deaths from malaria on this continent has increased from about 493,000 in 1980 to 1.6 million in 2004.

Dr. Dhorda told me, “I hope this is not something we will see in Africa. If combination therapy with artemisinin fails, cases and deaths will rise.”

The authors make numerous suggestions for combating both malaria and the mosquitoes that transmit it.

They propose adding another drug to artemisinin combination therapy to make malaria more difficult to treat.

Dr Dhorda says it will cost money, but: “We could spend a little more now, otherwise we would spend a lot more trying to control the fire instead of putting it out, allowing it to spread widely.”

Ntuli Kapologwe, Director of Prevention Services at the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, said: “We are asking donors, particularly the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the US Government Malaria Initiative, to give them a vision and provide funds for malaria control and eradication programs so that they can halt the spread of artemisinin resistance in Africa.”