FIENIE GROBLER, Johannesburg | Tuesday
THE African continent will take a step in the right direction when it marks Africa Malaria Day on Thursday.
A South African-based doctor will present research conducted in Mozambique to the Royal College of Physicians in Britain on the most effective malaria treatment developed to date.
Dr Stephen Toovey, medical director of Netcare Travel Clinics in South Africa, will brief the British medical community on Thursday, April 25 –Africa Malaria Day.
Toovey and a colleague, Dr Andrew Jamieson, published the results of their study in the British Medical Journal earlier this month.
They tested the new medicine, called co-artemether, which is a combination of two Chinese drugs (artemether-lumefantrine), on 75 malaria patients in Mozambique and achieved a 100% success rate. Toovey stressed that co-artemether was not a preventative drug, but a treatment for when malaria had been contracted.
”This treatment is far better than most other drugs. We are expecting the World Health Organisation to add this to its essential drugs list,” Toovey told said.
A full treatment for one patient will cost about R180.
”It’s in about the same price bracket as the other drugs currently being used against malaria. It’s a realistic price.”
Toovey said clinical trials of an advanced vaccine for prevention, focusing on children under the age of five, were also underway in Mozambique. The research was being conducted by a United States-based non-profit organisation and GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Biologicals).
”But that study will probably still take many, many years,” he said.
Toovey cautioned that the development of co-artemether should not steer people away from using preventative medicine when travelling to high risk areas.
He said it was a myth that one should refrain from taking malaria tablets as they masked the symptoms. ”If people don’t take malaria precautions we know exactly what to write on their death certificates.
”The evidence is very clear …your chances are 10 to 50 times higher to contract the disease than people who do take preventative medicine,” Toovey said.
He said those who stayed in malaria areas were not fully immune to the illness either.
”But if you grew up there and survived the first five years, you would have developed some immunity. It’s not practical to take a pill every day, but it is essential for travellers.”
Malaria kills more than one-million people each year (about 3 000 per day) and at least 300-million suffer from acute malaria annually, according to the Africa Malaria Day website.
Most of the victims are children and nine out of 10 cases occur in Africa south of the Sahara.
Pregnant women are also more likely to contract malaria, and a pregnant woman suffering from malaria is more prone to develop anaemia which increases the risk of death.
A global partnership, aimed at halving the world’s malaria burden by 2010, Roll Back Malaria, was created at the first malaria summit in Abuja, Nigeria on April 25, 2000.
African leaders also resolved to initiate sustainable action to ensure that by the year 2005; at least 60% of those suffering from malaria have prompt access to and are able to use correct, affordable and appropriate treatment within 24 hours of onset of symptoms; at least 60% of those at risk of malaria, particularly pregnant women and children aged under five, benefit from a combination of protective measures such as insecticide treated mosquito nets; and at least 60% of all pregnant women who are at risk of malaria have access to preventative or intermittent treatment.
It was decided that the summit be commemorated by declaring the annual Africa Malaria Day. This year’s focus will be on the community and how they can empower themselves to fight the illness.
Deadly fevers, believed to be malaria, were recorded between 6000 to 5500 BC, but the first true sighting of a malaria parasite was only made in 1880, by a French Army physician in Algeria.
The word is derived from the Italian language — ”mal aria” meaning ”bad air”.
Malaria is a protozoal (a group of single-celled microscopic animals, such as amoebas) disease transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito and is believed to have originated in Africa and to have accompanied human migration to the Mediterranean shores, India and South East Asia. It is believed that fishermen and traders, long before British colonisation, introduced the disease into northern Australia.
While it was recognised that the Anopheles mosquito played a key role in the transmission of the disease, all the stages in its life cycle were only identified in 1948.
The World Health Organisation initiated strategies for the global eradication of malaria in the mid-1950s. In 1967, it realised that it was impossible to root out, and the focus shifted to the control of the deadly disease. – Sapa