Word: artemisinin
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...Diseases have been stamped out before. The last case of naturally occurring smallpox was in 1977, after the disease killed about 300 million people earlier in the century. But finding a cure for malaria has proven more elusive. Artemisinin, which is still considered the most effective malaria treatment today, is derived from sweet wormwood, an herb native to Asia. It's been used to fight the disease in China for more than 2,000 years, but it wasn't until 1965 that the cure was isolated and purified by the Chinese military after its soldiers started falling ill during...
...artemisinin has been taken in Southeast Asia for more than 30 years - more than two decades longer than in most of the world - which has given the parasite more time to adapt. Getting people to take the right treatment has also proven to be a public-health challenge. As a fast-acting drug that typically clears out the parasite in less than 72 hours but doesn't remain in the body, artemisinin is prescribed with a slower partner drug to clean out any straggler parasites that might have developed resistance. Taking a partner drug with artemisinin, called combination therapy...
...drug, residents like the gem-mine workers rely on an unregulated, informal health sector, rife with cheap counterfeits and improper treatments. Last month, a Gates-funded study found that 60% of malaria drugs in the area were substandard or counterfeit. Many of the counterfeits contain a small amount of artemisinin so they can pass authenticity tests, and some fake drug containers have holograms logos more sophisticated than the ones on the genuine boxes. Even for experts, it can be impossible to tell the difference between the fakes and the real article just by looking at them. What's so important...
...fund's market-based strategy has been tested only in two districts in Tanzania and in a small pilot in Uganda, but the results were encouraging. In Tanzania, the number of families who bought genuine artemisinin combination-therapy drugs jumped from 1% to 44% after one year, and in Uganda, the proportion of people buying the recommended drugs went from 0 to 55%. Nahlen, however, points out that local health infrastructure varies greatly, and success in one place does not necessarily mean success in another...
...Arrow, 88, a professor emeritus at Stanford, says he is "baffled" by the U.S.'s refusal to support the plan. The cost of global artemisinin combination-therapy subsidies, he says, would run only about $300 million a year, a relatively small amount compared to campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Drug subsidies alone won't eliminate malaria, he admits, but combined with indoor mosquito spraying, bed nets and proper monitoring of what different areas need, Arrow says, "the world can eliminate malaria...