What is Super Malaria?

Where Super Malaria emerging from?The answer is Cambodia.

It is quite normal to get a mosquito bite in Siem Reap, what we did not expect from the bite is the super malaria parasite, now you should read about the fact. While it emerged in Cambodia but has since spread through parts of Thailand, Laos and southern Vietnam, taking serious precaution may save lives.

The Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) located in Bangkok aims to fight the infectious tropical diseases affecting rural communities in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world. MORU was established in 1979 as a research collaboration between Mahidol University, Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust, and is supported with significant funding from the Wellcome Trust, though it also receives funding from other trusts and foundations, governments, and multi-lateral donors. 

Prof Arjen Dondorp, the head of the research unit quote on BBC News the rapid spread of "super malaria" in South East Asia is an alarming threat, scientists are warned, globally .

This particularly form of malaria parasite resisted with the main anti-malaria drugs.It is alarming that this strain is spreading rapidly through the Mekong sub-region and we fear it can spread further as far as to Africa.

( Life cycle of Malaria - Image from Klein 2013) 

Quick FACT

In a letter published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the researchers pointed out the recent sinister development had shown a resistance to the drug artemisinin

Treatments containing an artemisinin derivative (artemisinin-combination therapies, ACTs) are now standard treatment worldwide for P. falciparummalaria. Artemisinin is isolated from the plant Artemisia annua, sweet wormwood, a herb employed in Chinese traditional medicine. A precursor compound can be produced using genetically engineered yeast. 

Chemically, artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone containing an unusual peroxide bridge. This peroxide is believed to be responsible for the drug's mechanism of action. Few other natural compounds with such a peroxide bridge are known. 

About 212 million people are infected with malaria each year caused by a parasite that is spread by blood-sucking mosquitoes, killed mostly children 

The first choice treatment for malaria is artemisinin in combination with piperaquine. 

But as artemisinin has become less effective, the parasite has now evolved to resist piperaquine too. 

Prof Dondorp said the treatment was failing around a third of the time in Vietnam while in some regions of Cambodia the failure rate was closer to 60%. Resistance to the drugs would be catastrophic in Africa, where 92% of all malaria cases happened.

Michael Chew, from the Wellcome Trust medical research charity, said: "The spread of this malaria 'superbug' strain, resistant to the most effective drug we have, is alarming and has major implications for public health globally.

"Around 700,000 people a year die from drug-resistant infections, including malaria.

If nothing is done, this could increase to millions of people every year by 2050."