Thailand Threatened by Possible Drug-resistant Malaria
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/02/15903518-drug-resistant-malaria-in-thailand-threatens-deadly-global-nightmare?lite
My article was
featured on NBC World News titled “Drug-resistant malaria in Thailand threatens
deadly global ‘nightmare’” written by Ian Williams. This article talks about
the potential threat in Thailand in the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, a part of
Mahidol University. The article profiles Dr. Francois Nosten who has in recent
month become alarmed because the top medicine to cure malaria, artemisinin, is
starting to take a longer time to work for patients, possibly because of
resistance from the deadly malaria. If malaria begins to resist this powerful
drug, it could cause many issues for the world, especially in places like
Africa where the most people die from malaria. Nosten especially fears this
resistance because it has happened before, in the 1990s in Africa, and it cause
millions of deaths. Nosten states "We
must prevent artemisinin resistance reaching Africa, but we also need to
control it for the people in Asia - for their future."
“Nobody
knows exactly why, but poverty, conflict and large migrant and refugee
populations constantly on the move all likely play a part. As do fake drugs or
a failure to properly complete a course of treatment.” This treatment usually
only took about 24 hours to cure the parasite, but now it is taking 3-4 days, and
sooner or later it wont be helping people at all with this terrible disease.
Nosten states that where he works in Thailand, "In 2009, we still had 90
percent of patients cured. In 2010, it dropped to 60 to 70 percent. Now it's
about 50 percent," The danger with this resistance is that initially it
seems like the parasite is gone, but soon it will come back after a few days
and the person is again infected.
I chose this article because it shows how
everyday diseases are changing. It is sad that everyone is always in danger of
infectious diseases due to the possibility that some day they will mutate and
resist their treatments. It is hard, in places like Thailand, where disease is
constantly striking the poor. People in Thailand and
other poor countries cannot afford for these mutations to occur. They are
fortunate to have these treatments but with the conditions they are living in,
can’t survive such a resistance.
Katie, this was a great article to write about. It relates to Mountains Beyond Mountains and Farmer's struggle to identify why TB patients in Peru were not being cured after taking several different antibiotics. The fact that the rate of patients being cured dropped from 90 to about 50 percent from 2009 is astonishing. It is likely that these numbers come from a similar situation as Peru described in the book. The majority of the sick were poor and unable to pay for all of their antibiotics. Also, some patients merely stopped taking their antibiotics once their symptoms went away, never fully curing the disease. Doing this is incredibly harmful because only taking in a small amount of antibiotics allows the body to build up defense against them. Several patients in Mountains Beyond Mountains became resistant to up to five different types of antibiotics due to this. It is sad because with these cases, it was simply a mistake as these people did want to be cured. Providing medical aid to third world countries could drastically help prevents the spread of drug resistant diseases.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Marissa about the connection to Mountains Beyond Mountains. It seems as though one of the biggest problems with getting people cured is that they do not complete their prescribed medications due them not taking it once they start to feel better even though the antibiotics have not completed their task. Marissa does a good job explaining this. I wonder if there are groups in Thailand that have considered doing similar things that Partners in Health have done with the local Haitians in terms of getting them together and going from patient to patient in their homes in order to make sure they took their medicine. We think we invincible these days with modern technology, but there are ancient concerns we can't look away from such as disease.
ReplyDelete