Malaria killing millions in Africa, LatAm,/1259 West Nile infections reported over past week

[Guest guest]

Malaria killing millions in Africa, LatAm

 

AP

http://66.242.35.139/news/item.php?keyid=6006 & page=3 & category=1

 

September 19, 2003

 

Fri, Sep. 19, 2003

 

Malaria killing millions in Africa, LatAm

By GLENN McKENZIE

Associated Press

 

LAGOS, Nigeria - Shivering and sweating feverishly, Felicia Egbuchue took

the malaria medicine her doctor prescribed. Although it had cured her in

years past, this time it didn´t. She was rushed to the hospital, and hooked

up to an intravenous drip.

 

" I have no inner strength. I feel like I´m dying, " the 30-year-old

university student said from her hospital bed.

 

Malaria, the ancient mosquito-borne disease that was rolled back by medical

advances in the mid-20th century, is making a deadly comeback.

 

Strains of the disease are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment,

infecting and killing more people than ever before - sickening as many as

900 million last year, according to estimates by the U.S. Agency for

International Development.

 

More than 1 million people - and as many as 2.7 million by some estimates -

of those victims died. The vast majority of the deaths were in Africa.

 

After three days in a private hospital in Nigeria´s commercial capital of

Lagos, Egbuchue recovered from what doctors said was a strain that had

become resistant to many of the standard treatments.

 

" Malaria is something that we thought we had conquered years ago. But more

and more of our people are dying from it every day, " said Patrick Dike, a

malaria specialist at the Lagos hospital.

 

Only AIDS kills more people worldwide. Among children, malaria kills even

more than AIDS.

 

The economic cost of malaria is also high - in countries of Africa, Asia and

Latin America where the disease is endemic, the World Health Organization

estimates up to $12 billion are lost annually to the disease.

 

Americans traveling abroad also are at risk. Of the 225 Marines and Navy

forces who went ashore to assist West African peacekeepers in Liberia, 51

showed symptoms - an unusually high rate, U.S. officials said.

 

International efforts to contain or even eradicate the disease have received

a boost in recent years with major grants from the U.S. government and from

the $4.7 billion five-year U.N. Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and

Malaria.

 

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has supported malaria efforts,

is also expected to announce new funding toward malaria medicines, controls

and vaccine research this weekend.

 

" We hope that malaria gets some additional visibility, " Bill Gates, the

Microsoft tycoon, said in a conference call with journalists. " Of those

million people who die, overwhelmingly those are children. ... This is

something we should demand more action on. "

 

Malaria campaigners complain that despite the increased focus, their efforts

remain woefully underfunded. Whereas AIDS vaccine research receives $400

million a year, malaria research receives just $60 million.

 

While donors commit an estimated $200 million each year to treating

impoverished patients and distributing mosquito nets and insecticides to

prevent mosquito bites that transmit the disease, experts say they need at

least $1 billion to make a dent.

 

" Malaria has to some extent been forgotten by the international community, "

said Allan Schapira, a senior official in WHO´s Rollback Malaria program.

" Apart from AIDS, it is the single worst child health problem that we

haven´t got a grip on. "

 

In Nigeria, a nation of 126 million people where government officials

estimate up to one-quarter of the world´s malaria deaths occur, researchers

at the national Nigerian Institute of Medical Research test malaria

treatments and other drugs on mice in a single tiny, stiflingly hot

laboratory.

 

" The resources available in Nigeria for this work are limited or even

nonexistent, " research director Philip Agomo said.

 

A major cause of malaria´s alarming resurgence is the parasite´s increasing

resistance to the drugs used to treat and prevent the disease - including

chloroquine, the cheapest and most effective anti-malarial since the 1950s.

 

The number of alternatives are limited. The WHO supports use of multi-drug

combinations based on artemisinin, until recently an extract from the " sweet

wormwood " plant used in China for centuries but little known in the West.

 

Yet aid agency officials say that artemisinin is not yet produced in large

enough quantities to affordably treat the large numbers of Africans who need

it most.

 

Some governments and Western donors have been hesitant to promote the

treatment widely because of a lack of funds - artemisinin is 10 times more

expensive than chloroquine, or between $4.50 and $9 for a three-day

treatment.

 

" It is definitely the future, " Anne Peterson, head of global health for

USAID in Washington, said of artemisinin-based drugs. " Yet it is far more

expensive and harder to get out to the numbers of people who need it. "

 

The Nobel Prize-winning international humanitarian group Medecins Sans

Frontieres is urging the United States and other Western governments to

support and fund artemisinin-based therapy regimens. It notes chloroquine

and other drugs have become ineffective in up to 80 percent of malaria cases

in some countries.

 

" Donors must stop wasting their money funding drugs that don´t work, " MSF

said in a report.

 

Peterson, the USAID official, said that until it receives more funds, the

U.S. agency will support the use of the " cheapest, most effective drugs " in

countries where they still have use.

 

Dike, the Lagos doctor, said in the absence of affordable alternatives, he

and some colleagues have in desperation begun exchanging information about

what available combinations work best to treat patients.

 

" People don´t understand why their relatives are sometimes not recovering,

or why they are not being cured as quickly as they are used to being cured.

How do you explain drug resistance? When they are suffering, the doctor is

blamed. "

 

 

 

1,259 West Nile infections reported over past week

 

Newsday

 

 

September 19, 2003

 

http://66.242.35.139/news/item.php?keyid=6002 & page=3 & category=1

 

Two get encephalitis after receiving tainted transfusions, officials say

 

By Delthia Ricks

Newsday

Originally published September 19, 2003

 

Cases of West Nile disease jumped by more than one-third over the past seven

days, and two people have developed encephalitis after receiving

transfusions tainted with the virus, federal health officials said

yesterday.

 

Infections rose from 2,878 a week ago to 4,137 as of yesterday. The drastic

increase of 1,259 cases in a week is in keeping with predictions by the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that this year´s West Nile season

would probably break last year´s record. With a few weeks remaining in the

season, there are 19 fewer cases than the 4,156 recorded for all of last

year.

 

 

This week´s surge was attributed, in part, to a delay in reporting from

state health departments, a CDC spokeswoman said yesterday.

 

Federal experts underscored yesterday that far fewer people have died of the

mosquito-borne virus, which flares in summer. To date, there have been 80

West Nile-related deaths nationwide compared with 284 last year.

 

Experts attribute the difference to physicians´ better recognition of West

Nile symptoms. One of the key signs of infection is a flu-like malaise,

which can serve as a West Nile tipoff because common strains of flu do not

surface in summer. Doctors now know that the illness can be mild or manifest

itself as a powerful three-day flu.

 

The latter may be an intermediate form of West Nile between mild infection

and deadlier forms that invade the brain. A polio-like syndrome was also

recognized as a rare manifestation.

 

West Nile invaded the United States through New York in 1999. In New York,

26 cases have been reported and three people have died. The hardest hit

states this year are Colorado with 1,542, followed by South Dakota and

Nebraska, each of which have reported more than 500 cases.

 

Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC´s director, said the reason some states are

harder hit centers on the number of West Nile-infected birds in a region.

Mosquitoes that bite infected birds then pass the microbe to people.

 

" The epidemic is dependent on many factors, including weather and rainfall, "

Gerberding said.

 

Word of the two transfusion-related illnesses - one in Nebraska and the

other in Texas - comes amid aggressive federal efforts this year to prevent

West Nile´s transmission through the blood supply. Two West Nile detection

systems are being evaluated at blood banks nationwide.

 

" Our transfusion supply is far safer than it was a year ago, " Gerberding

said.

 

She and other government health officials suggested the two

transfusion-related cases may have occurred as a result of extremely low

levels of the virus eluding detection.

 

" Already over 600 units of blood have been detected with significant amounts

of active virus in them and were removed, " from the nation´s blood supply,

said Dr. Jesse Goodman, director of the Center for Biologics at the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration.

 

" We have prevented a very large number of infections and a significant

amount of clinical disease, " Goodman said. " We are continuing studies to

detect low-level units. "

 

Gerberding added that it was only last year when public health experts

recognized that West Nile could be transmitted through the blood supply. She

said the two testing methods under study are performing extraordinarily well

for first generation methods of detecting the pathogen.

 

Last year, she emphasized, 23 people died as a result of West Nile-tainted

transfusions.

 

Newsday is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.