Resistance to malaria drug growing, experts warn

Growing resistance to the world's most effective drug treatment for malaria in Cambodia is a development that could threaten the lives of millions of people, scientists warned today.

Malaria experts said that the problem in Cambodia must be contained as there were no other effective drug treatments available. The drugs are now taking up to four or five days to clear all malaria parasites from the blood rather than two or three days, according to the UK study by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.

Dr Glenn McConkey, a malaria expert at Leeds university, said: "This could be a major threat in terms of drug resistance."

He said there was a danger that the prevalence of resistance to artemesinin could become as widespread as that to chloroquine, which used to be the mainstay of drug treatment.

"It's a matter of time before resistance to artemesinin in widespread. The concern is that it will spread before we can develop a new drug to replace it," said McConkey.

Professor Brian Greenwood, professor of tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said resistance to the drug was at present only partial and patients should still be cured if they took artemisinins in combination with another antimalarial, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

He said that Cambodian pharmacies were supplying patients with artemisnin alone, or flawed courses of the drug were sold that did not contain enough active ingredients to kill the malaria parasite.

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