The
drug artemisinin, used to treat malaria is becoming more and more resistant to
treatments. Doctors in Southeast Asia have noticed that there are a lot of
patients who do not change symptom changes after the drug had been
administered. Lack of treatment options are going to lead to higher death rates
from Malaria. It is very important for children especially to receive treatment
as soon as possible in order to recover quickly and correctly. If the
treatments do not work properly or at all it will lead to death and defects.
Medicines related to artemisinin have been known to eventually stop treating
the disease and now that the new version of artemisinin is beginning to fail,
doctors need to start testing for new options. However, the article said that
it could take up to 5 years for the newest working drugs to be available for
public use. Public Health Officials believe that researchers need to focus very
hard on looking for a cure for this disease before it gets out of hand and
there are no more drugs to treat it.
This is
extremely bad for those in regions of Asia and Africa which are mostly affected
by the disease. Since my topic for blogs this semester has been health and
disease I have seen stories about Malaria all over the internet. It almost
seems as though it is the biggest health issue going on at the moment in the
world. I feel as though new drugs should have been in the works as soon as the
first two forms of artemisinin failed to be effective for a long time. With the
failing medications I believe that there should be an increased focus not only
on finding and new medication, but also on prevention. Malaria outbreaks would
be cut in half if those of Africa had mosquito nets to prevent the bugs from
getting to them. While this is not a fix and will in no way stop the cases from
continuing, it will at least be a cheaper way in helping cut down the numbers
of cases and giving researchers a better chance at developing a cure or just
better medication in general.
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