More effective malaria drugs to be introduced

Kenya will phase out the use of sulphur-based antimalaria drugs in favour of the more effective artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) because the disease was becoming increasingly resistant to the other formulations, the country's director of medical services said on Thursday.

All public facilities will soon be supplied with ACTs to replace drugs such as the widely used Fansidar and Metakelfin. "Once we receive the stocks of ACTs we have ordered, we will replace the sulphur-based drugs," said James Nyikal, director of medical services. He said sulphur-based antimalarials would continue to be used to treat cases of malaria among pregnant women and children. The safety of ACTs on pregnant women and children under the weight of 10 kg has not been conclusively proven.

The government has earmarked some US $21 million for the purchase of ACTs, and 10,000 health workers will be trained on how to administer them, at an estimated cost of $2 million, he said. The Kenyan government would use money disbursed through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to subsidise the cost of the new treatment, which is 10 to 15 times more expensive than other drugs.

Nyikal told reporters on Wednesday that one in four malaria patients treated with sulphur-based drugs in Kenya does not recover, indicating that the malaria parasite was increasingly developing resistance to the treatments. According to Kenya's health ministry 70 percent of the country's population (more than 20 million people) is at the risk of malaria every year and the disease claims 34,000 children, most of them under the age of five, annually.

Artemisinin was developed from a Chinese herb to counter the malaria parasite’s growing resistance to earlier treatments, including chloroquine. Malaria experts have recommended that artemisinin be used in combination with other effective antimalarials. The result is a treatment that has proven 90 percent effective in tests conducted on nearly every continent.

Malaria is caused by microscopic parasites that are transmitted from person to person by female anopheline mosquitoes. The disease is widespread mainly in poorer tropical areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America. According to the World Health Organization, malaria threatens approximately 2 billion to 3 billion people annually, or roughly 40 percent of the world’s population, and inflicts approximately 500 million clinical attacks each year. Most infections and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.