Asia Expats Forum

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WASHINGTON - Southeast Asia has emerged as the global center for drug resistant malaria and is fuelling illicit trade in counterfeit drugs used to fight the disease killing one million people every year, officials said on Monday.

“Southeast Asia bears high burdens of the disease,” the World Bank said as it launched a “Global strategy and booster program” that could involve up to one billion dollars to help developing nations make faster progress in their fight against malaria.

The region, dubbed the “epicenter of drug-resistant malaria,” is second after Africa in terms of percentage of malaria deaths.

“The bank maintains an epidemiological focus on the region because of the drug resistant problem, said Jean-Louis Sarbib, the Washington-based bank’s senior vice-president for human development.

Although most of the Southeast Asian economies do not tap the bank’s resources for malaria control,” we will adjust whatever response to tackling the drug-resistant problem with full participation” of our partners, he said.

The region has malaria that is resistant to one or more of the usual antimalarial drugs and so the drug may not prevcent malaria, even if taken correctly.

“These drug resistant forms later spread elsewhere,” the World Bank warned in a report at the launching of the new program, seen as a “booster” to thenot-so-successful “Roll back malaria partnership” started in 1998.

“We have been quite candid about the fact that we need to rededicate ourselves because some of the earlier commitments of the Bank have unfortunately not been always followed by action,” Sarbib admitted.

In large part, he said, it was because the bank was also fighting at the same time the much dreaded HIV and AIDS problem and ”our capacity and the capacity in the countries was not enough to fight on all fronts at the same time.”

Judging from initial demand from countries for more help in fighting malaria, the bank said the new program could require “a total commitment of 500 million to one billion dollars” over the next five years, including co-financing that the Bank anticipates from partners.

At least 85 percent of the one million annual deaths from malaria occur in Africa, eight percent in Southeast asia, five percent in the eastern Mediterranean region and one percent in the Western pacific, the bank said.

Scientist Rick Steketee, who is involved in a malaria control project funded by computer software tycoon Bill Gates, said while Vietnam and Thailand had largely succeeded in taming the disease in Southeast Asia, “Myanmar in contrast is in dire straits.

“There is continued transmission, high intensity and all of the drug resistant malaria that’s in that region is spreading,” he said.

Thailand, Steketee said, faced “border malaria”—which spread from across its borders with Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, while pockets of disease-prone areas in Indonesia were spread out across the vast archipelago.

The drug resistant malaria problem is also fuelling a roaring trade in counterfeit drugs, including the new and effective Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drugs.

“With all due respects, Southeast Asia’s where you can make money by making fake anti-malarials,” Steketee said.

“Even the Artemisinin compounds—touted as the solution to drug resistance—are being faked in Southeast Asia. The counterfeiters follow where people are buying these drugs, counterfeit the drug and put it in the market and all of a sudden, the rumour gets out that the drugs are not working,” he said.

Steketee said the counterfeit syndicates had skillfully changed the packaging by reproducing the hologram and filling it with fake drugs.

“For drugs to be safe and effective, they have to be what they say they are,” he said
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