malaria

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Herbal Drug Widely Embraced in Treating Resistant Malaria

 

 

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

Published: May 10, 2004

 

 

 

After years of hesitation, world health agencies are racing to acquire 100 =

million

doses

of a Chinese herbal drug that has proved strikingly effective against malar=

ia, one of

the leading killers of the poor.

 

The drug, artemisinin (pronounced are-TEM-is-in-in), is a compound based o=

n

qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by Chinese military

researchers, it cut the death rate by 97 percent in a malaria epidemic in V=

ietnam in

the early 1990's.

 

 

 

It is rapidly replacing quinine derivatives and later drugs against which =

the disease

has evolved into resistant strains.

 

To protect artemisinin from the same fate, it will be given as part of mul=

tidrug

cocktails.

 

Until recently, big donors like the United States and Britain had opposed =

its use on a

wide scale, saying it was too expensive, had not been tested enough on chil=

dren and

was not needed in areas where other malaria drugs still worked.

 

Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, which procures drugs for the w=

orld's

poorest countries, opposed its use during an Ethiopian epidemic last year, =

saying that

there was too little supply and that switching drugs in mid-outbreak would =

cause

confusion.

 

But now almost all donors, Unicef and the World Bank have embraced the dru=

g. The

new Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given 11 countries g=

rants to

buy artemisinin and has instructed 34 others to drop requests for two older=

drugs —

chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine — and switch to the new one.

 

" We want countries to move very rapidly to use it as a first-line treatmen=

t, " said Dr.

Vinand Nantulya, the fund's malaria adviser. The fund expects to spend $450=

million

on the drug over the next five years, he said.

 

The World Health Organization, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, es=

timates

that 100 million doses will be needed by late 2005.