Malaria Resistant pathogens worry the WHO

World Malaria Day: WHO warns against the spread of resistant malaria pathogens

04/26/2013

Yesterday, on World Malaria Day, the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as many local national health authorities and aid agencies, highlighted the future challenges in the fight against malaria and warned against the increase in funding for the fight against malaria in the face of increasing levels of resistant pathogens.

Named as one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UN) in 2000, the fight against malaria has seen significant global advances in the fight against malaria, thanks to increased funding, including private donors such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates become. Although major advances in malaria prevention and treatment have been made in the heavily polluted sub-Saharan African countries, experts now see this positive development at risk. In Southeast Asia, malaria pathogens are becoming more resistant to available drugs, according to the WHO communication.

660,000 malaria deaths per year
„In recent years, we have made great strides in reducing new cases and deaths from malaria, but progress may now be jeopardized“, stressed the WHO expert on HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and rare tropical diseases, dr. Hiroki Nakatani. „ We are increasingly concerned about the signs from the Southeast Asia region that the malaria parasites have become resistant to some of the drugs that have contributed to making such progress at all“, explained Dr. Nakatani. Most recently, malaria transmission was reported by 99 states, with around 3.3 billion people living in it. The World Health Organization experts estimate that in 2010 an estimated 219 million people worldwide became infected and 660,000 people died of malaria. Children are most often affected under the age of five.

Risk of resistance to malaria drugs
While these numbers of malaria infections and deaths are still alarmingly high, they represent a significant reduction from the year 2000. Not least the improved availability of so-called artemisinin-based combination therapies plays a decisive role here. With the help of the active ingredient artemisinin hundreds of thousands of lives were saved. However, the malaria pathogens (so-called plasmodia) have apparently gradually adjusted to the artemisinin-containing medicines. According to the WHO, a comparable development took place once in the 1960s, when the pathogens became resistant to the then common malaria drug chloroquine. The consequence was a significant increase in malaria deaths. Even then, the resistant pathogens first appeared in Southeast Asia and then spread to Africa.

Spread of resistant malaria pathogens
If the resistant malaria pathogens now identified in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam spread to Africa, this would be a major setback in the fight against malaria, according to the consensus of experts. „The consequences of the spread of artemisinin resistance would be catastrophic“, stressed the director of the WHO Malaria Program, Robert Newman. „We need to act now to protect Southeast Asia today and sub-Saharan Africa tomorrow“, Newman continues. The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also highlighted the challenges of increasing resistance to malaria in a World Malaria Day press release and the consequences of spreading the pathogens in African countries south of the country Sahara warned. To date, every minute in Africa, a child dies of malaria.

Emergency plan against resistant malaria pathogens
The Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, dr. Mark Dybul said: „We need to invest more to fight resistance.“ Meanwhile, WHO has launched an emergency plan to control resistant malaria pathogens. For example, this provides for the complete elimination of poor quality anti-malarial drugs and oral artemisinin-based monotherapy, as it will both affect the efficacy of the treatment and increase the risk of developing resistance. „We are at a turning point. What looks like a local threat could easily get out of hand and have serious consequences for global health“, warned dr. Newman.

Lack of funding for malaria control
The World Health Organization also sees a significant problem in the financial endowment of malaria control. Up to $ 350 million additional funding is needed here for the period 2013-2015 to successfully contain and completely eliminate the resistant pathogens. To see all people worldwide by the year 2020 „universal access to malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment“ $ 5.1 billion per annum is required ... But today, funding is only around $ 2.3 billion. In this way, adequate medical care for all infected persons could not be guaranteed and, in addition, malaria prevention would suffer because, for example, the money for the purchase of mosquito nets was lacking. Here it becomes clear that the ambitious determination of development goals does not help, if subsequently the necessary financial resources are not raised. (Fp)

Also read:
Research against malaria falters because of lack of money
Twice as many malaria deaths
Help algae fight malaria?
Sweat socks smell against malaria
Climate change: Dengue fever reaches Europe
Discovered drug against malaria
With toxic DDT against malaria

Picture: Gerd Altmann