RESPITE may soon come for millions who suffer from malaria in Africa and other parts of the world, as a new drug to cure the disease was yesterday launched in Paris, France.
The drug is aimed especially at the thousands of children in sub-Saharan Africa affected daily by the disease.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the medicine is a combination of two drugs which have proved successful in the past.
Scientists have said it is simple to administer, which should make it easy to complete the treatment and overcome the risk of building up resistance.
Malaria kills up to three million people in the world each year, mostly in Africa. However, in Africa more than a million children die from malaria each year, while the disease affects some 3,000 children under five in Africa daily.
Europe’s largest multi-national pharmaceutical company, Sanofi-Aventis, joined forces with a non-profit organisation, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI), to launch the drug ASAQ.
It will be sold at a very low price and will not be patented, which means other companies could also produce it cheaply.
The new medicine is a “fixed-dose combination” of two drugs – artesunate and amodiaquine – that have proven effective in the past in fighting malaria.
By bringing in two medications that attack different aspects of the parasite, it is effectively killed.
Previous combinations of these drugs have had patients taking up to six tablets a day for a period of five days.
But the course of treatment for the new drug consists of just two pills a day for three days for adults and one pill daily for three days in children.
Experts say this should help patients complete their treatment and therefore overcome the risk of the parasite building up resistance.
“By bringing in two medications that attack different aspects of the parasite, you get to kill the parasite invariably. So if it is resistant to one, the other one is bound to take the parasite out of existence,” said Prof. Wilfred Mbacham, a malaria expert for the national malaria control programme in Cameroun.
“Therefore this new fixed combination is about the right way to go, especially by reason of the fact that people will take them to completion and will be able to eliminate these resistant forms of parasite,” he told the BBC World Service’s “Focus on Africa” programme.
The new medicine should be available for delivery later this year.
But health experts warn that given the speed with which resistance to malaria drugs has spread across Africa, it could end up being a short-term solution.