India should take cognisance of a World Health Organization warning issued on Saturday which raises the red flag about resistance to malaria medication.
The issue came up at the 'Malaria 2012: Saving Lives in the Asia-Pacific' conference which highlighted the importance of regional cooperation to combat the issue of drug resistance. The specific issue in question was the resistance to artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) used to treat malaria.
"Anti-malarial drug resistance is one of the greatest challenges to continued success in controlling and eliminating malaria in the Asia-Pacific," the Director of the Global Malaria Programme of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Robert Newman told the gathering, according to a press release.
Malaria is caused by the transmission of a parasite to humans through infected mosquitoes. India reports more than 1.5 million cases of malaria annually with half of them estimated to be falciparum malaria and is one of the countries were the disease is endemic.
WHO officials said artmesinin resistance had been identified in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailandand Vietnam.
India too needs to take such warnings of resistance seriously. Adopting a multi-pronged approach is the need of the hour.For starters, there should be a stringent crackdown of over the counter medication so that drugs aren't indiscriminately used by people. So also, we need mass awareness campaigns to educate people about the importance of completing their entire course of medication.
The country already has a monitoring network consisting of three monitoring teams across 11 regional offices to study resistance to chloroquine (first-line malaria medication). It is perhaps time the monitoring is extended to ACT and cover more regions of the country, as well.
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