Guest guest Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.iht.com/articles/519087.html Switch to herbal malaria drug gains momentum Donald G. McNeil Jr./NYT NYT Monday, May 10, 2004 After years of hesitation, world health agencies are racing to acquire 100 million doses of a Chinese herbal drug that has proved strikingly effective against malaria, one of the leading killers of the poor. .. The drug, artemisinin, is a compound based on qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by Chinese military researchers, it cut the death rate by 97% in a malaria epidemic in Vietnam in the early 1990s. .. It is rapidly replacing quinine derivatives and later drugs that the disease has outwitted by evolving resistant strains. This time, to prevent artemisinin from suffering the same fate, it will be given as part of multiple-drug cocktails as AIDS drugs are. .. Until recently, big donors like the United States and Britain have opposed its use on a wide scale, saying it is too expensive, has not been tested enough on children and is not needed in areas where other malaria drugs still worked. Unicef, the United Nations Fund for Children, which procures drugs for the world's poorest countries, opposed its use during an Ethiopian epidemic last year, saying there was too little supply and switching drugs in mid- outbreak would cause confusion. .. Now virtually all donors, Unicef and the World Bank have embraced it. The new Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given 11 countries grants to buy artemisinin and has instructed 34 others to drop requests for two older drugs, chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and switch to the new one. .. " We want countries to move very rapidly to use it as first-line treatment, " said Dr. Vinand Nantulya, the fund's malaria adviser. The fund expects to spend $450 million on the drugs over the next five years, he said. .. The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, estimates that 100 million doses will be needed by late 2005. .. Malaria causes about 300 million illnesses a year, and at least 1 million deaths - 90% of them in Africa, and most of them children under 5. Despite more than a century of eradication efforts, the disease is endemic from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam to the Amazon basin in Brazil, and particularly bad across central Africa, from the cane fields of Mozambique to the oases of Somalia to the rubber plantations of Liberia. .. Like many tropical disease drugs, artemisinin is a fruit of military research. Chinese scientists first isolated it in 1965 while seeking a new antimalarial for Vietnamese troops fighting U.S. forces, said Dr. Nelson Tan, medical director of Holley Pharmaceuticals, which makes it in Chongqing, China. Another antimalarial still in use, mefloquine, was isolated at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1963 for U.S. troops in the same jungles. Under the name Lariam, it is still issued to troops and sold to travelers. .. Artemisinin quickly cures fevers and also rapidly lowers blood- parasite levels, which can keep small outbreaks in heavily mosquito-infested areas from spreading into epidemics. .. Two years ago, Dr. Dennis Carroll, a health adviser to the United States Agency for International Development, said artemisinin was " not ready for prime time. " On April 30, at a malaria conference in New York, he led a session on ways to induce farmers to plant more wormwood. .. While denying that the U.S. had ever opposed artemisinin in principle, Carroll said more evidence had emerged that it was safe and older drugs were not working. Also, the creation of the Global Fund sped up grants for it. Dr. Stewart Tyson, a health expert in Britain's foreign aid agency, said his agency's mind was changed by its experience in Uganda, where resistance to older drugs climbed from 6% in 2000 to 31% in some areas in 2003. .. The price of artemisinin cocktails has fallen from $2 per treatment to 90 cents or less as more companies in China, India and Vietnam have begun making them. Older drugs cost only 20 cents. Novartis, the Swiss drug giant, sells its artemisinin-lumefantrine mix, Co-artem, to poor countries for 10 cents less than it costs to make, a company official said. The same drug, under the name Riamet, is sold to European travelers for about $20. .. As a plant material, artemisinin cannot be patented, said Dr. Allan Schapira, a policy specialist for the WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign. .. Though it grows wild even in the United States, artemesia is cultivated only in China, Vietnam and at pilot projects in Tanzania and India. It is planted in December and needs eight months to mature, and drug companies want firm orders from donors before they try to triple production. .. Even if enough artemisinin can be made, obstacles will arise, experts warned. For example, said Dr. Kopano Mukelabai, a Unicef malaria specialist, shopkeepers will have to be trained not to sell patients one or two pills if they lack the money for a full course of 12. .. And what Richard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, a public health group that fights malaria epidemics, called " the love of chloroquine " will have to be broken. That quinine derivative, in use since the 1950s, is now virtually useless against parasites, but poor people still buy it because it's cheap and lowers fever as aspirin does. .. The New York Times After years of hesitation, world health agencies are racing to acquire 100 million doses of a Chinese herbal drug that has proved strikingly effective against malaria, one of the leading killers of the poor. .. The drug, artemisinin, is a compound based on qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by Chinese military researchers, it cut the death rate by 97% in a malaria epidemic in Vietnam in the early 1990s. .. It is rapidly replacing quinine derivatives and later drugs that the disease has outwitted by evolving resistant strains. This time, to prevent artemisinin from suffering the same fate, it will be given as part of multiple-drug cocktails as AIDS drugs are. .. Until recently, big donors like the United States and Britain have opposed its use on a wide scale, saying it is too expensive, has not been tested enough on children and is not needed in areas where other malaria drugs still worked. Unicef, the United Nations Fund for Children, which procures drugs for the world's poorest countries, opposed its use during an Ethiopian epidemic last year, saying there was too little supply and switching drugs in mid- outbreak would cause confusion. .. Now virtually all donors, Unicef and the World Bank have embraced it. The new Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given 11 countries grants to buy artemisinin and has instructed 34 others to drop requests for two older drugs, chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and switch to the new one. .. " We want countries to move very rapidly to use it as first-line treatment, " said Dr. Vinand Nantulya, the fund's malaria adviser. The fund expects to spend $450 million on the drugs over the next five years, he said. .. The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, estimates that 100 million doses will be needed by late 2005. .. Malaria causes about 300 million illnesses a year, and at least 1 million deaths - 90% of them in Africa, and most of them children under 5. Despite more than a century of eradication efforts, the disease is endemic from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam to the Amazon basin in Brazil, and particularly bad across central Africa, from the cane fields of Mozambique to the oases of Somalia to the rubber plantations of Liberia. .. Like many tropical disease drugs, artemisinin is a fruit of military research. Chinese scientists first isolated it in 1965 while seeking a new antimalarial for Vietnamese troops fighting U.S. forces, said Dr. Nelson Tan, medical director of Holley Pharmaceuticals, which makes it in Chongqing, China. Another antimalarial still in use, mefloquine, was isolated at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1963 for U.S. troops in the same jungles. Under the name Lariam, it is still issued to troops and sold to travelers. .. Artemisinin quickly cures fevers and also rapidly lowers blood- parasite levels, which can keep small outbreaks in heavily mosquito-infested areas from spreading into epidemics. .. Two years ago, Dr. Dennis Carroll, a health adviser to the United States Agency for International Development, said artemisinin was " not ready for prime time. " On April 30, at a malaria conference in New York, he led a session on ways to induce farmers to plant more wormwood. .. While denying that the U.S. had ever opposed artemisinin in principle, Carroll said more evidence had emerged that it was safe and older drugs were not working. Also, the creation of the Global Fund sped up grants for it. Dr. Stewart Tyson, a health expert in Britain's foreign aid agency, said his agency's mind was changed by its experience in Uganda, where resistance to older drugs climbed from 6% in 2000 to 31% in some areas in 2003. .. The price of artemisinin cocktails has fallen from $2 per treatment to 90 cents or less as more companies in China, India and Vietnam have begun making them. Older drugs cost only 20 cents. Novartis, the Swiss drug giant, sells its artemisinin-lumefantrine mix, Co-artem, to poor countries for 10 cents less than it costs to make, a company official said. The same drug, under the name Riamet, is sold to European travelers for about $20. .. As a plant material, artemisinin cannot be patented, said Dr. Allan Schapira, a policy specialist for the WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign. .. Though it grows wild even in the United States, artemesia is cultivated only in China, Vietnam and at pilot projects in Tanzania and India. It is planted in December and needs eight months to mature, and drug companies want firm orders from donors before they try to triple production. .. Even if enough artemisinin can be made, obstacles will arise, experts warned. For example, said Dr. Kopano Mukelabai, a Unicef malaria specialist, shopkeepers will have to be trained not to sell patients one or two pills if they lack the money for a full course of 12. .. And what Richard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, a public health group that fights malaria epidemics, called " the love of chloroquine " will have to be broken. That quinine derivative, in use since the 1950s, is now virtually useless against parasites, but poor people still buy it because it's cheap and lowers fever as aspirin does. .. The New York Times After years of hesitation, world health agencies are racing to acquire 100 million doses of a Chinese herbal drug that has proved strikingly effective against malaria, one of the leading killers of the poor. .. The drug, artemisinin, is a compound based on qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by Chinese military researchers, it cut the death rate by 97% in a malaria epidemic in Vietnam in the early 1990s. .. It is rapidly replacing quinine derivatives and later drugs that the disease has outwitted by evolving resistant strains. This time, to prevent artemisinin from suffering the same fate, it will be given as part of multiple-drug cocktails as AIDS drugs are. .. Until recently, big donors like the United States and Britain have opposed its use on a wide scale, saying it is too expensive, has not been tested enough on children and is not needed in areas where other malaria drugs still worked. Unicef, the United Nations Fund for Children, which procures drugs for the world's poorest countries, opposed its use during an Ethiopian epidemic last year, saying there was too little supply and switching drugs in mid- outbreak would cause confusion. .. Now virtually all donors, Unicef and the World Bank have embraced it. The new Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given 11 countries grants to buy artemisinin and has instructed 34 others to drop requests for two older drugs, chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and switch to the new one. .. " We want countries to move very rapidly to use it as first-line treatment, " said Dr. Vinand Nantulya, the fund's malaria adviser. The fund expects to spend $450 million on the drugs over the next five years, he said. .. The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, estimates that 100 million doses will be needed by late 2005. .. Malaria causes about 300 million illnesses a year, and at least 1 million deaths - 90% of them in Africa, and most of them children under 5. Despite more than a century of eradication efforts, the disease is endemic from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam to the Amazon basin in Brazil, and particularly bad across central Africa, from the cane fields of Mozambique to the oases of Somalia to the rubber plantations of Liberia. .. Like many tropical disease drugs, artemisinin is a fruit of military research. Chinese scientists first isolated it in 1965 while seeking a new antimalarial for Vietnamese troops fighting U.S. forces, said Dr. Nelson Tan, medical director of Holley Pharmaceuticals, which makes it in Chongqing, China. Another antimalarial still in use, mefloquine, was isolated at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1963 for U.S. troops in the same jungles. Under the name Lariam, it is still issued to troops and sold to travelers. .. Artemisinin quickly cures fevers and also rapidly lowers blood- parasite levels, which can keep small outbreaks in heavily mosquito-infested areas from spreading into epidemics. .. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Best regards, Email: < WORK : Teagasc Research Management, Sandymount Ave., Dublin 4, Ireland Mobile: 353-; [in the Republic: 0] HOME : 1 Esker Lawns, Lucan, Dublin, Ireland Tel : 353-; [in the Republic: 0] WWW : http://homepage.eircom.net/~progers/searchap.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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