WHO backs combination malaria treatments

Published: 1-Jul-2002


The World Health Organisation is advising countries experiencing a rise in resistance among malaria mosquitoes to conventional medicines, such as chloroquine, to start promoting new combination treatments. These artemisinin-based combination therapies are derived in part from a Chinese herb, and kill malaria parasites very fast, allowing patients to recover rapidly with few side-effects.

Indeed, the WHO has just added one of these medicines – artemether/lumefantrine – to its Essential Medicines List. The theory is that with the two components of the treatment working in sharply divergent ways, malaria mosquitoes will be unable to evolve natural resistance to their properties. Chloroquine resistance is particularly high in western, central and southern Africa.

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