Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Large-Scale Action' Needed In Myanmar To Prevent Spread Of Artemisinin-Resistant Malaria Parasites
In this New York Times opinion piece, Frank Smithuis, director of Medical Action Myanmar in Yangon, and Nick White, professor of tropical medicine at the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, recount a brief history of the development of anti-malaria drugs and their contribution to "a significant global reduction in malaria" and note that this progress "is now threatened by the emergence of malaria parasites that are resistant to artemisinin on the Cambodia-Thailand border ..., the same place where chloroquine resistance emerged 50 years ago and spread across Asia and Africa to claim millions of lives." They write, "The spread of artemisinin resistance is a very serious threat to health in the tropics. There are currently no drugs that can satisfactorily replace artemisinins."
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