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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Dec 10 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)
WHO: India has 12.8cr suspected malaria cases
London:


As many as 111 crore Indians are at risk of getting infected with malaria and of these, 28 crore have been found to be at highest risk. The World Health Organization on Tuesday said that India has 12.8 crore suspected malaria cases.India recorded 8.81 lakh confirmed cases. This means that only 7% of malaria cases are being confirmed in the country . The country also faces the most deadly threat of the malaria strain becoming resistant to the most advanced drugs available till date, thanks to unregulated selling of banned malaria therapies.
The most dangerous malaria carrying vector ­­ P falciparum has been found to have become resistant to the drug artemisinin in five countries ­­ Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. WHO has banned the sale of oral artemisinin based monotherapy medicines and replaced them with artemisinin combination therapies. The use of monotherapy medicines threatens the long-term usefulness of artemisinin because it fosters the spread of resistance to the drug. The number of countries that allow the marketing of oral artemisininbased monotherapies has dropped tremendously since the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution supporting the ban in 2007.
But as of December 2014 the WHO confirmed that 24 pharmaceutical companies continued to market oral artemisinin monotherapies, half of them located in India.WHO also said India and Thailand are on track to achieve a decrease of 50­75% in malaria cases.
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