Failure to adopt new drugs fuels rise of malaria

New drug-resistant strains of Malaria could thwart global efforts to halve malaria deaths by 2010 unless major players in the fight against the disease speed up the rollout of vital new drugs, health experts say.

Ninety percent of all malaria deaths are in Africa, where experts say the emergence of drug-resistant strains help maintain a staggering death rate, particularly among children. An African child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.

"There is every reason to believe that mortality from malaria has been rising in Africa over the last 15 years as a result of drug resistance," Robert Snow, professor of public health at the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, told Reuters AlertNet, a humanitarian Web site run by Reuters Foundation.

"Basically non-malaria mortality in children has dropped over time, but deaths attributed to malaria have risen."

The only explanation, Snow said, is that existing drugs became less effective during the same period.

The Roll Back Malaria initiative - a partnership between the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Development Programme and the World Bank - aims to halve the mortality rate of a disease that kills between one and 3 million people a year.

Under the U.N.-sponsored Millennium Development Goals, the international community agreed to try to halt and begin to reverse the spread of malaria by 2015.

In an editorial last week, the Lancet medical journal said the Roll Back Malaria initiative had failed to control the disease and may actually have done more harm than good.

But the WHO said global goals could still be met.

"Many countries will go beyond these targets," said Andrea Bosman, a medical officer in the WHO's Malaria Strategy and Policy Team. "But the majority will be challenged.

"These are very ambitious targets to be met over a short amount of time, but if there's a concerted effort among donors, things can be improved."

Some experts say that optimism is misplaced, given the slow rate at which big global funders of anti-malaria programs have been willing to pay for a new class of anti-malarial drugs, called artemisin-based combination therapies.

"The fact is, they (big global funders) have cost us several years of progress and cost us several million lives," said Amir Attaran, a professor of law and population health at Ottawa University.

OBSOLETE DRUGS

Attaran caused controversy last year by accusing the WHO and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria of knowingly funding the purchase of obsolete drugs in countries where drug-resistant strains of malaria topped 90 percent.

The WHO recommended in 2001 that countries with drug resistance should switch to artemisin-based medication and the United States - which provides up to one third of the Global Fund's malaria budget - approved the new drugs for use in Africa in 2002.