Medical experts form network to fight malaria

Medical experts from eight central African countries have formed a network to fight malaria following a three-day meeting in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. At the end of the Wednesday-Friday meeting, the experts from Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, the Republic of Congo and the DRC agreed to form the Reseau d'Afrique Centrale pour traitement anti-paludisme (RACTAP). "The aim of the network is to make a standardised map of the problem of resistance to certain anti-malarial drugs in all the countries in the region, because in some countries there is resistance to certain drugs such as chloroquine," Dr Andrea Bosman of WHO Geneva and medical officer for the Roll Back Malaria campaign, told IRIN. Bosman said that according to a WHO study, resistance was greater in the sub-regional countries closest to eastern and southern Africa. During the meeting, the medical experts proposed overcoming the resistance in certain regions to the administration of chloroquine by using a combination of two drugs. Bosman said the network, which is to be supported by WHO, the World Bank and USAID, would have a budget of US $1.3 million for a preliminary three-year phase. Bosman said details of the budget would be known in June.