PARIS: More than a third of malaria drugs examined
by scientists in Southeast Asia were fake, and a similar proportion analysed in
Africa were below standard, doctors warned on Tuesday.
"These
findings are a wake-up call demanding a series of interventions to better
define and eliminate both criminal production and poor manufacturing of
antimalarial drugs," said Joel Breman of the Fogarty International Center
at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Trawling
through surveys and published literature, the researchers found that in seven
Southeast Asian countries, 36 percent of 1,437 samples, from five categories of
drugs were counterfeit.
Thirty-per
cent of the samples failed a test of their pharmaceutical ingredients.
In 21
sub-Saharan countries, 20 per cent of more than 2,500 samples tested in six
drug classes turned out to be falsified, and 35 per cent were below
pharmaceutical norms.
Sub-standard
medications are a major problem in the fight against malaria, a disease which
killed 655,000 people in 2010, according to the UN's World Health Organisation
(WHO).
Many of
the drugs that are being faked or poorly manufactured are artemisin
derivatives, the study said.
This is
a special worry, for artemisinins are the frontline treatment for malaria,
replacing drugs to which the malaria parasite has become resistant.
The
study says there are many causes for the problem, ranging from widespread
self-prescription of drugs to shoddy controls to monitor drug quality and
prosecute counterfeiters.
"Poor-quality
anti-malarial drugs are very likely to jeopardise the unprecedented progress
and investments in control and elimination of malaria made in the past
decade," said Breman.
Last
month, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of
Washington in Seattle reported that artemisin-resistant malaria which was first
spotted in Cambodia in 2006 has since surged 800 kilometres (500 miles)
westward to the Thailand-Myanmar border.
-
AFP/fa
No comments:
Post a Comment