Malaria threatening millions of people

Ethiopia is facing a major malaria epidemic threatening six million people and doesn't have enough drugs to treat them, the United Nations warned on Friday. It is appealing for US $4.9 million to buy drugs, equipment and training to help treat victims during the next high-risk, four-month period. Malaria is the third biggest killer in Ethiopia claiming up to 114,000 people each year, according to the country's health ministry. A child is killed every 30 seconds by the disease throughout the African continent. During an epidemic the number of citizens needing medical help can increase three-fold, overburdening the country's health sector. The UN said traditional drugs used to fight malaria had made the crisis worse and even "constrained attempts to contain previous malaria epidemics". New combination-therapy drugs are far more effective, but cost five times as much. "We need to get the money for the drugs urgently," Paul Herbert, head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, said. "The problem is we have a large increase in resistance and so unless these drugs are in place we could have a tremendous loss of life." If money doesn't come, the country may have to fall back on non-effective drugs that have failed to control the disease, Herbert added. All forms of malaria are deadly, but the parasite species plasmodium falcifarum, which causes cerebral malaria, is the most lethal, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Cerebral malaria - one of four types of malaria - could kill a person in three to four days if left untreated. Most of Ethiopia's 70 million people live in rural areas where health services are poor or non-existent. Studies by the health ministry last year showed clinical failure rates of the traditional anti-malaria medication Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine of up to 36 percent. But new Artemether-Lumefantrine medication is 99 percent effective, say health experts. "To respond to the malaria epidemic expected within the next six months - a total of $8.9 million is required, of which $4 million has been secured," a UN statement said. "This leaves a gap of $4.9 million for which concerned agencies are appealing." The WHO, UNICEF, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank launched a campaign in 1998 to fight the disease called Roll Back Malaria. Among the goals are rapid diagnoses of malaria and more intensive research.