Plagues, Pestilences and Diseases
UN: Drug-resistant malaria spreading in Asia
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 18, 2010; 10:12 AM
GENEVA -- The World Health Organization says countries are not doing
enough to detect drug-resistant malaria, which is spreading in
Southeast Asia.
The U.N. health agency says there is evidence that type of malaria has
now spread from Thailand's western border with Myanmar to its
southeastern Cambodian border.
WHO says a strain of the mosquito-borne infectious disease resistant to
the most effective antimalarial drugs emerged on the Myanmar border two
years ago.
It warned that resistance to the malaria drug artemisinin could spread
to African countries, just like it did with previous malaria treatments
in the 1960s and 1970s.