Archive for the ‘malaria’ Category
How to overcome the causes of malaria
The enormous effort and investment to tackle malaria, with a view to eradicating one day be lost if you spread a form of the disease that is resistant to the drugs more accessible and widespread throughout the world, today warned the World Health Organization Health Organization (WHO).
To prevent this from happening, the organization presented a global plan to contain resistance to artemisinin, the plant that provides the basis for conventional treatments for type of malaria that causes more deaths.
“Our greatest weapon is threatened,” said WHO Director General Margaret Chan. That is why a plan is urgently needed because there are no other bad drugs that offer the same level of efficacy and tolerability among patients. In that sense, the organization seeks to intensify and coordinate efforts to prevent the spread of the disease in resistant version.
Chan said that recently it was confirmed that the core of the resistant form of malaria is on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, while another outbreak is suspected in the vast area that crosses the Mekong River.
He explained that the specific objective of the global plan to stop the outbreak presented unresponsive to artemisinin, which is currently controlling your home, and avoid or at least delay, international spread.
In the last decade, the number of malaria cases fell 40% in countries where the disease is endemic, so that in this period were saved 750,000 lives. Progress has been most noticeable since 2006, when widespread use of insecticide-treated nets and artemisinin-based treatments.
Among the objectives that trace the global plan are, first, stop the spread of resistant forms of the parasite, although this “will require additional resources,” said Chan. Specifically, it will take between 10 and $ 20 more per person in areas with confirmed resistance and between 8 and 10 dollars in risk areas, such as the Great Mekong.
WHO also considers it essential to intensify the monitoring and surveillance of resistance, because of the 75 countries should systematically undertake efficacy trials of treatments, only 31 comply with them.
“There is a risk that in the areas not under permanent surveillance of resistance to artemisinin resistance extends seamlessly,” according to the body.
Another key measure is to improve access to diagnostic tests for malaria, so that conventional treatments are applied rationally.
When a person who does not get malaria drugs against the disease-which occurs frequently in Africa in cases of fever, increases the risk that your body creates resistance.