Intensify malaria control measures — WHO

Saturday, January 29, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on malaria endemic countries to intensify good malaria control measures in order to reduce transmission and lower the risk of resistant parasites from spreading.
This comes in the wake of reports of evidence of resistance to artemisinins being identified and confirmed on the Cambodia-Thailand border in Asia. The first resistance to chloroquine was discovered in the same region about a decade ago, leading to its ban later on in malaria endemic countries which had also developed resistance to it.
The WHO currently recommends the use of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs) for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. The first line ACTs for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Ghana is the Artesunate Amodiaquine (ASAQ) while the second line is Arthemether/Lumefantrine (AL) or Dihydroartemisin Piperaquine (DHAP).
Fortunately, there has not been any resistance to artemisinins in Ghana but there is the need to mobilise immediately to contain artemisinin resistance and stop its spread to new areas.
Consequently, the WHO has developed the Global Plan for Artemisinin Resistance Containment (GPARC) which calls to action the prevention of resistance development in ACTs.
The plan was jointly developed by the Global Malaria Programme and the Roll Back Malaria in consultation with more than 100 malaria experts and seeks to guide countries on how to prevent development of resistance to artemisinin.
Speaking at a press briefing in Accra, the WHO Advisor for Malaria, Dr Felicia Owusu-Antwi, said what countries could do to prevent the emergence of resistance was to increase monitoring and surveillance to evaluate the threat of artemisinin resistance as well as improve access to diagnostics and rational treatment with ACTs.
For Ghana, she among others said, “There should be consistent and accurate diagnostic testing for patients suspected of having malaria; better access to ACTs for confirmed malaria cases; compliance with ACT treatment; removal or non patronage of artemisinin mono-therapies and elimination of all sub-standard and counterfeit drugs.
The Programme Manager of the National Malaria Control Programme, Dr Constance Bart-Plange, said it was important to guard ACTs because “if we lose ACTs we are finished.”
She said doctors have been retrained but there were still some “stubborn ones who were still prescribing monotherapy” which were no longer effective treatment for malaria.
On making ACTs affordable, she said with the introduction of the Affordable Medicines Facility-Malaria (AMFm), the ACTs which were of good quality were selling between GH¢1 to 1.50 p.
However, she said some saboteurs were selling the medicines at very high prices and called on the public to be on the look out and report such people.
Dr Bart-Plange said the era where every fever was malaria was over and that the NMCP had deployed rapid diagnostic test kits to health facilities and pharmacies to ensure that people were confirmed to be having malaria before they were given an anti-malarial.
The programme was organised by the Johns Hopkins University Voices for Malaria Free Future in collaboration with the NMCP and the Ghana Health Service.