Search This Blog

Friday, December 17, 2010

Indonesia : Malaria more resistant than ever - Scientist

Via The Jakarta Post :

" There is the potential for malaria epidemics to break out in the country due to the disease’s increasing resistance to the one effective drug in circulation, scientists warn.Din Syafruddin of Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, said Tuesday that malaria’s resistance to drugs was an inevitable result of the improper use of anti-malarial medicines.

“We have misused anti-malarial medicines, resulting in a growing anti-malarial drug resistance,” he told The Jakarta Post at a three-day symposium titled “Human Genetics and Infection: Towards Better Management of Disease”, which concluded Wednesday.The symposium was held by Eijkman Institute and the NITD-Eijkman Institute-Hasanuddin University Clinical Research Initiative.

He said many people took anti-malarial medicines even though they had not been properly diagnosed with the disease.“This has caused malarial parasites to become resistant,” he said, adding that such drugs should never be prescribed to anyone who was not confirmed to have the disease.Malaria is a blood disease that is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito.

“Even if they show malarial clinical symptoms such as high fever, we cannot assume that they have malaria,” Din said.The World Health Organization reported that there were 250 million cases of malaria annually, resulting in 880,000 deaths."

No comments:

Post a Comment