Drug-resistant malaria threatens the world from Burma

The political reforms in Burma come not a day too soon. In this country, where ethnic peoples who are difficult to reach live, the malaria parasite is becoming increasingly resistant to the important drug artemisinin.

“Political changes have given our medical workers more freedom to reach areas previously closed off by the military,” said Mahn Mahn, secretary of the Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT), an organization focused on health care for the ethnic minorities in Burma. Previously, the aid workers had to carry their backpacks full of medical aid between the mines and the bullets to get to the remote areas where the Karen, Shan and Kachin live.

Resistance to artemisinin

Improvements in the political situation could not have been more timely, as the deadly malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, appears to have developed resistance to artemisinin, the most effective malaria drug. This month, malaria researchers wrote in the medical journal Lancet that patients on the border between Burma and Thailand increasingly slow to respond to the drug. That suggests that resistance is on the rise.

The World Health Organization (WHO) called this week for more attention to be paid to Burma in order to control resistance. “The four countries most affected by resistance are Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Burma. Of these, Burma has by far the biggest problems," the WHO said. “Due to its large migrant population, widespread use of oral artemisinin and its proximity to India, Burma is crucial to contain resistance.”

WHO is trying to contain resistance

According to Bill Davis, director of the Burma project of the Physicians for Human Rights organization, there is a strong link between malaria and human rights. “Research among the Karen shows that people whose rights have been violated were much more likely to contract malaria than others.” “Forced labour, theft of food and forced displacement have direct consequences for health.”

Border Thailand and Cambodia

According to the WHO, 2010 million cases of malaria were reported in South and Southeast Asia in 2,4. 18 percent of these occurred in Burma. The government reported 788 deaths from the disease that year. Emerging artemisinin resistance fits the image of Southeast Asia as the “epicenter of drug-resistant malaria in the world,” according to the WHO. The fight against resistance to chloroquinine, once a popular drug, has also been lost here. It started at the border between Thailand and Cambodia and from there spread all over the world.

Mahn Mahn hopes the government will recognize organizations along the border, such as the BPHWT, "so we can improve our health programs," he said. “We cannot now buy medicines and supplies in Burma because we are not a registered organization.”

Source: IPS