Some 35,710 Malaria Cases Reported In Cambodia, Killing 28 People In First Six Months This Year

PHNOM PENH, July 25 (Bernama) -- Some 35,710 malaria cases had been reported in the first six months of this year, a 23 per cent decrease compared with 46,360 cases in the same period last year, a report of the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control showed on Wednesday.

China's Xinhua news agency cited the report as saying that the death toll from the disease during the January-June period this year was 28 people, a 10 per cent drop from 31 deaths in the same period last year.

Char Meng Chuor, head of the centre, said that the decrease was due to the awareness campaigns and mosquito net distributions to the disease-prone groups of people.

Cambodia: 27 Die in 29,510 malaria cases in first 5 months

PHNOM PENH, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Some 29,510 malaria cases were reported in Cambodia in the first five months of this year, claiming 27 lives, according to a report of the country's National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control on Tuesday.

The report showed that the number of malaria cases declined by 11 percent compared with the same period last year, while casualties remained the same.

Char Meng Chuor, director of the center, said that the decline was thanks to regular awareness campaigns by health officials and the distribution of mosquito nets to the disease-prone groups of people.

Scientists find a third of malaria drugs in Southeast Asia are fake

A third of malaria drugs in Southeast Asia have been found to be fake. Picture: Supplied Supplied

May 22, 2012
AFP

MORE than a third of malaria drugs examined by scientists in Southeast Asia were fake, doctors have warned.

"These findings are a wake-up call demanding a series of interventions to better define and eliminate both criminal production and poor manufacturing of anti malarial drugs," said Joel Breman of the Fogarty International Center at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Trawling through surveys and published literature, the researchers found that in seven Southeast Asian countries, 36 per cent of 1,437 samples, from five categories of drugs were counterfeit.

Thirty per cent of the samples failed a test of their pharmaceutical ingredients.

Knowlesi malaria: Emergent strain poses threat to global containment efforts

Macaques have been blamed for spreading malaria

April 24, 2012
By Katherine Rowland
Financial Times

A malaria parasite emerging in south-east Asia could pose a setback to global elimination goals.

Since 2004, plasmodium knowlesi malaria, long known to affect macaque monkeys, has been identified in hundreds of people in Malaysia. There have also been scattered cases in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

While knowlesi is unlikely to reach pandemic proportions, health authorities are concerned it could harm eradication initiatives. Kevin Palmer, former director of the western Pacific regional office of the World Health Organisation, says health systems are ill-prepared to respond to a zoonotic form of malaria, a strain of the disease that transmits from animals to humans.

Malaria kills 98 Cambodians, down 35 percent in 2011

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Malaria had killed 98 Cambodians in 2011, a decline of 35 percent from 151 deaths in a year earlier, said a senior health official on Monday.

Last year, some 62,690 cases of malaria had been reported, said Char Meng Chuor, the director of the National Center for Malaria.

"We see our remarkable success in fighting malaria in the past year--despite the rise in malaria cases, the death toll has declined up to 35 percent," he told Xinhua over telephone. "This is thanks to people's awareness about the symptoms of the disease and they have timely sought medical treatment."

Cambodia starts record distribution of nets in bid to beat malaria

Nov 7, 2011
DPA

Phnom Penh - The Cambodian government began handing out the first of 2.7 million insecticide-treated nets Monday in a bid to eliminate malaria by 2025.

The distribution, Cambodia's largest ever, is being paid for by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

A handout of nets in western provinces in 2009 saw a near immediate drop in malaria cases, according to Dr Steven Bjorge, who heads the malaria team at the Cambodia office of the World Health Organization, which is providing technical assistance.

Using text messaging as weapon in malaria war

Sophana can now report malaria cases instantaneously (Photo: David Swanson/IRIN)

A village malaria worker administers a simple blood test for malaria in Pailin, considered the epicentre for drug-resistant malaria (Photo: Brendan Brady/IRIN)

TA REACH, 6 September 2011 (IRIN) - Cambodian efforts to contain the spread of malaria have been strengthened by a pilot project using text messaging and web-based technology.

"My work is definitely easier," said Sophana Pich, 41, one of 184 village malaria workers (VMWs) now trained in three provinces (Kampot, Siem Reap and Kampong Cham) since the project launch earlier this year.

She typically diagnoses five to six cases of the often deadly virus each month during the rainy season between May and October.

"Before, it would take a month before this information was reported to the district health level. Now it's instantaneous," the mother-of-three said from her home in Ta Reach, a village of 200 households in Kampot Province, about 150km southwest of Phnom Penh.

Global Fund Hit by Millions of Dollars in Malaria Drug Thefts [-Theft also took place in Cambodia]

April 20, 2011 at 3:26 PM EDT
By: Talea Miller
PBS Newshour (USA)

Millions of dollars worth of malaria medication donated through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria may have been lost to theft, according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The Global Fund confirmed to AP an estimated $2.5 million worth of malaria drugs may have been taken from Togo, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Cambodia between 2009 and 2011. Potential theft was also found in eight other countries, most in Africa, according to the documents.

The fund has been investigating malaria medication shipments stolen and sold for profit for months -- in September, a spokesperson told the NewsHour a probe was ongoing in several countries -- but the scale is far larger than the tens of thousands of dollars originally suspected.

Seaweed could yield malaria drug

ATLANTA, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Researchers battling malaria say they have found a new, if unlikely, ally -- a seaweed in Fiji that produces a compound shown to kill the malaria parasite.

The seaweed, a form of red algae, produces an anti-fungal compound that has been shown to be effective against the parasite, which has evolved resistance to many existing malaria drugs, AAAS ScienceMag reported Monday.

The most recent anti-malaria drug, artemisin, is already coming up against a resistant strain of the disease in Cambodia, scientists say.

In Fiji, chemical ecologist Julia Kubanek of the Georgia Institute of Technology collected seaweeds and other marine species to look for natural antibiotics, screening compounds isolated from those organisms not just for antibiotic potential but also for anti-cancer, anti-HIV and other biomedical properties.

More effort needed in fighting malaria along Thai-Cambodia border

Oct 1, 2010
DPA

Bangkok - Efforts to combat a more resistant strain of malaria are showing results on the Thai-Cambodia border, but more needs to be done, a Thai official said Friday.

Efforts to combat malaria intensified two years ago after mosquitoes along the Thai-Cambodia border were discovered to be more resistant to the artemisinin drugs treatment.

That discovery worried experts since artemisinin remains the main combination therapy to combat malaria, and a resistant strain could have significant public health consequences.

The situation is worst parts of south-eastern Thailand's Chantaburi and Trat provinces and Cambodia's Pailin province.

'There the mosquitoes are more resistant and can spread. We want to eliminate them before they spread,' said Saowanit Vijaykadga, of the Bureau of Vector Borne Disease.

Cambodia is making progress battling the disease. As of mid-September, there were only two cases of plasmodium falciparium, one of the most deadly forms of malaria, among 5,686 people screened in 16 villages in Pailin, according to the bureau website.

In the adjacent Soi Dao and Pong Nam Ron districts of Chantaburi province, there was a similar trend, with incidence dropping from 16 to seven from 2008 to 2009.

In an effort to wipe out mosquito-borne diseases, the World Health Organization has developed a cross-border containment effort with the Thai and Cambodian governments.

This 22.5-million-dollar project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uses a combination of prevention and treatment methods.

Saowanit said those include newer insecticides, mosquito nets for people who spend time in the jungles, and better application of treatment for those who get malaria.

But more collective regional efforts are needed to make a difference in addressing the malaria problem on the border, the WHO said in a press release Thursday.

Dr Charles Delacollette, co-ordinator of the WHO's Mekong Malaria Programme, said the members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) need to 'be more aggressive' in their anti-malaria efforts.

Delacollette said more political will from ASEAN governments was needed, as was wider coverage of the campaign areas to increase awareness among people at risk.

'As a body for regional socio-economic growth, it is important for ASEAN to show strong commitment,' he said.

Gates grant funds production of genetically engineered malaria drug

A Cambodian soldier offers blood for a malaria test near the Cambodian and Thai border, where efforts are underway to eliminate a drug-resistant strain of falciparum malaria (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

July 8, 2010
Posted by Kristi Heim
Seattle Times (Washington State, USA)

The Institute for OneWorld Health, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, said it has received $10.7 million from the Gates Foundation to begin commercial production of a key ingredient for malaria treatment.

In a partnership with drug company Sanofi-Aventis, the institute will use the Gates grant to prepare for large-scale production and commercialization of semi synthetic artemisinin by 2012.

Semi synthetic artemisinin is produced by a combination of genetic engineering and synthetic chemistry.

Artemisinin, the standard treatment recommended for malaria, is derived from artemisia, an herb found in Chinese medicine from the leaves of the wormwood tree.

While the parasite that causes the mosquito-borne disease has developed resistance to traditional drugs such as chloroquine, artemisinin in combination with other drugs is considered to be the most effective medication and credited with raising recovery rates globally.

The problem is its cost. Labor intensive extraction drives the price up and out of reach of most people in malaria prone areas such as sub-Saharan Africa.

This scientific paper describes the process, and this article offers a plain English translation of the project to use genetic engineering techniques to create microbes that can mass-produce artemisinin. (The University of Washington is also studying artemisinin's potential in cancer prevention.)

But even a more stable supply may not fully solve the problem of drug resistance when it comes to malaria. U.S. health officials say resistance to artemisinin is spreading.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned last year that parasites resistant to artemisinin had emerged along the border between Cambodia and Thailand.

The Gates Foundation gave the Institute for OneWorld Health a five-year $42.5 million grant in 2004 to establish and validate a manufacturing process to make artemisinin-type drugs more affordable.

Malaria cases rising in Cambodia

Thursday, April 29, 2010
Written by Dan Parr
VSO International

The number of Malaria cases in Cambodia has increased significantly, health officials have announced.

According to the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control, better detection and reporting of the problem is required to combat the problem, Irin New reports.

The organisation has stated there was a 41 per cent increase in such instances last year.

In 2008, the amount of people recorded to have the illness stood at 58,887, but this swelled to 83,217 in 2009.

Chea Ngoun, the centre's deputy director, told the news provider that the mosquito-borne condition caused the deaths of 209 people in 2008 and 279 more in the following 12 months.

Mr Ngoun offered a number of explanations for the escalation, including an early rainy season, internal migration to malaria-ridden communities and delayed distribution of bed nets.

It was recently reported that the country was still waiting for around 300,000 swine flu vaccines promised to them by the World Health Organisation.

CAMBODIA: Malaria cases rise sharply

The number of cases remains dramatically lower than 12 years ago

BANGKOK, 27 April 2010 (IRIN) - The number of malaria cases recorded in Cambodia has increased significantly, say health officials, citing several reasons, including better detection and reporting.

According to the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control, there was a 41 percent increase in cases last year.

The country - which has become an epicentre for malaria - recorded 83,217 malaria-infected persons in 2009, from 58,887 the previous year, after a steep drop in the number of cases over the past several years.

The mosquito-borne disease killed 279 people in 2009 from 209 in 2008, Chea Nguon, the centre’s deputy director, told IRIN from Phnom Penh.

Multiple factors

Nguon cited several factors for the spike, including an earlier-than-usual rainy season, a late distribution of insecticide-impregnated bed nets, and internal migration to malaria-affected areas. He said there was also a natural cyclical rise in the number of cases every two to three years.

In addition, the increase reflected a rise in the number of people with access to healthcare, he said.

Since 2004, the government has trained malaria workers in 1,300 villages to detect and treat malaria, so a greater number of patients are being properly diagnosed and recorded than in previous years.

“Cambodia is establishing more and more village malaria workers, who are detecting more malaria that wasn’t detected previously,” said Steven Bjorge, technical officer for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Cambodia.

“The populations most affected are people who work in the forest,” Bjorge said. Those include soldiers and their families, plantation workers, and even workers at a hydroelectric plant in the west of the country. Villagers hunting and gathering in the forests were also at risk, he said.

Many malaria patients in areas with poor access to public health facilities attend private clinics, which do not report cases to the government.

Nguon said the number of cases still might be higher than recorded, and as the government trained more village malaria workers, the figures may rise because of better reporting.

Drug resistance

Cambodia in recent years has become one of the world’s malaria focal points after authorities detected along the country’s western border with Thailand a strain of the disease resistant to Artemisinin, one of the most effective drugs used to treat malaria.

WHO has set up a special Artemisinin-resistant malaria containment project in the area.

“As in the past, the Thai-Cambodian border is home to the emerging drug resistance. The two countries and several partners, donors, as well as WHO, are working relentlessly to eliminate this dreadful parasite from this hot spot,” said Jai P. Narain, director of communicable diseases for the WHO Southeast Asia regional office.

Nguon noted that the number of cases in 2009 was still dramatically lower than 12 years ago, when there were 170,387 infected persons and 865 deaths.

“Compared to Vietnam or Thailand, the [numbers of] cases are still high,” he said. “We hope to eliminate malaria by 2025, and we are committed to that goal, but it’s still in the process.”

The government and NGOs are continuing to train village malaria workers and to collect data on malaria patients who sought medical assistance from private clinics.

Cambodia records more cases of malaria and dengue fever in 2009

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has seen a rise in reported cases of dengue fever and malaria in 2009, local media reported on Tuesday, citing health officials here.

Ngan Chantha, director of dengue control at the Ministry of Health, was quoted by the Cambodia Daily as saying that there were11,652 cases and 37 deaths reported in 2009 compared with 9,456 reported cases and 65 deaths in 2008.

While infections increased 30 percent, deaths were down by half, he said.

When asked if the number is expected to increase in 2010, Chantha said it would depend on how well individuals protect themselves and their families from the mosquito-born virus.

Figures for malaria cases in 2009 are still being tallied, said Ministry of Health and World Health Organization officials, but are already higher than in 2008, when there were 58,887 cases and 209 deaths.

In 2009, 60,157 recorded malaria cases led to 213 deaths from January through September.

"We don't have the full numbers, we're still collecting the totals from the provinces, but yes, in 2009 there were more cases than in 2008," said Duong Socheat, director of the National Center for Parisitology, Entomology and Malaria Control. He blamed more migrant movement and more mobility for more cases of malaria.

Low-cost malaria drug to combat fakes

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Inexpensive legitimate distribution of a leading malaria-fighting drug has begun in Asia to combat ineffective counterfeit medications, officials say.

A strain of malaria on the Thailand-Cambodian border has become resistant to the drug artemisinin, the current treatment of the disease, Time magazine reported. The drug is derived from sweet wormwood, a naturally growing herb in Southeast Asia.

Artemisinin has been the preferred treatment for more than 30 years. Now malaria's deadliest strain, Plasmodium falciparum, is resistant because the parasite has had time to adapt, so artemisinin is being given in combination with another drug, Time says.

Many drugs along the Thai-Cambodian border are counterfeit., the magazine says. To combat this, the Global Fund, with a multimillion-dollar contribution from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the global health community and various governments, signed-off on a $220 million-plus plan called Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria. It will distribute quality anti-malarial combination drugs for $0.05 a dose, hoping to drive out counterfeit drug suppliers, Time reported.

"No one will want to sell counterfeits when the real doses are 5 cents," says Duong Socheat, director of Cambodia's National Malaria Center.

Malaria is the third-deadliest infectious disease behind HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Gates Foundation pours $115 million into new malaria drugs

October 17, 2009
By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times

Health experts around the globe were chilled earlier this year by the discovery that malaria in Cambodia has evolved resistance to the most promising drug in medicine's arsenal.

With the effectiveness of artemisinin under threat, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up its investment in new malaria drugs with a $115 million grant to the Geneva-based Medicines for Malaria Venture. The grant brings the foundation's total funding for the group to $317 million.

Malaria has long been a top priority for the Gateses, who in 2007 took the controversial step of calling for eradication of the disease. Many experts question whether that will ever be possible, but foundation CEO Jeff Raikes recently said the world's biggest philanthropy is refocusing its malaria programs with the goal of eradication in mind.

The "E-word," which some malaria scientists utter with trepidation based on past failures, is repeated three times in MMV's four-paragraph press release on the new grant.

In February, MMV and drugmaker Novartis introduced a sweet-tasting version of the combination malaria drug Coartem for African children. The group is funding work on more than 50 drug candidates, ten of which are in clinical development.

Malaria cases reported in Cambodian public facilities drop more than 50%

24. June 2009
The Medical News

There was more than a 50 percent drop in the total number of malaria cases reported by public facilities in Cambodia between 2003 and 2008, according to the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control's annual report, which was released on Tuesday, the Phnom Penh Post reports. Officials are attributing the decrease to village-based treatment and education programs.

Malaria cases reported at public hospitals decreased from 132,571 cases in 2003 to 58,887 cases in 2008, according to the report. There were 209 malaria-related deaths last year, down slightly from 241 deaths in 2007. Statistics from 2008 showed that villages with malaria workers – which tend to be in remote areas where malaria is endemic – saw a "sharp decline" in the number of confirmed malaria deaths, the newspaper reports. "In 2004, there were 33 confirmed deaths in villages with malaria workers, but by last year, there were only five, despite the fact that the number of cases tested more than tripled," writes the Phnom Penh Post. These village-based programs have expanded in 2009 due to funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to the newspaper.

Michael O'Leary, the WHO's country representative, said, "I am really interested in this achievement… which is a really big accomplishment in fighting malaria." In addition, the report showed the number of people who knew about malaria prevention and transmission increased from 42 percent in 2004 to 72 percent in 2007. However, "behaviour does not seem to be keeping pace with knowledge," according to the report, which said the number of people seeking the correct treatment within 48 hours of showing symptoms increased only slightly (Leakhana/Shay, Phnom Penh Post, 6/24).

Malaria Developing Worrisome Resistance

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
17 November 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

Cambodia’s western provinces have been developing a resistance to the only anti-malaria medication the government uses, a worried health official said Monday.

“I’m worried so much about malaria,” said Duong Socheat, director of the National Malaria Center. “Artemisinin is the No. 1 drug. Its ability is decreasing.”

The National Malaria Center had taken measures to cure malaria outbreaks, including the examination of malaria resistant to the drug. The center also provides education to villagers to use the drug properly and urges people to sleep under mosquito nets.

Cambodia began using the drug in 2000. Now it is used “100 percent” in state hospitals. Resistance to the drug began showing up around 2005, Duong Socheat said.

This year, the government used 3.6 million tablets of the drug, he said. Some of the medication was provided by the Chinese government, he said.

About 70 people nationwide have died from malaria so far this year, he said.

“If malaria becomes resistant to artemisinin,” he said, “gradually, more patients of malaria will die.”

Nurse: Disease will claim lives if Cambodia-Thai temple talks fail

Aug 17, 2008
DPA

Preah Vihear, Cambodia - Personnel near an ancient temple on the Thai-Cambodia border warned Sunday that if talks over disputed borders fail, lives will be lost - but to disease, not war.

Nurse Keo Neang from the Preah Vihear district health department said malaria, scurvy and also diseases spread by poor sanitation had all begun taking a toll on locals and troops alike.

Troops on both sides were moved back from the border Saturday ahead of Monday's talks scheduled for the Thai seaside resort of Hua Hin, but could be redeployed at any time if the talks fail.

'We have received drugs from the government and the royal palace, but we will need more if troops move back in: basics like (paracetamol-based) Mixagrip for fevers and vitamin C,' Neang said.

'If Thailand does not permanently withdraw its troops after these meetings, we are looking at some serious potential epidemics on the border as well as some very big sanitation issues.'

Sergeant Nguon Samnang, on the frontline of Cambodia's defence, agreed that fighting was far less of a peril than disease for troops.

'We have plenty of food, but it is all dried or tinned and there are no fresh vegetables,' he said.

'If the talks fail and we have to dig in again, there are going to be casualties on both sides from poor nutrition and of course malaria; some have fallen ill already.'

Malaria is endemic to areas around both Preah Vihear temple, an 11th century temple around 300 kilometres from the capital, and the Ta Moan group of temples, 150 kilometres to its west.

Thai troops occupied areas around both sites after UNESECO granted Cambodia World Heritage status for Preah Vihear over Thai objections early last month. Cambodia matched the troop movements.

Cambodia says the land is sovereign but Thailand disagrees, causing major strains on the formerly friendly bilateral relations between the neighbours and even fears that fighting may break out.

Cambodian and Thai soldiers complain about weather condition

Monday, August 11, 2008
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

On 06-07-08 August, the temperature at Preah Vihear temple is very cold and the entire mountain was covered with fog accompanied by light rain. Those who live in the region, whether they are soldiers or civilians, are affected by the cold weather. A larger number of civilians and soldiers caught the cold, and some are affected by malaria. A large number of Thai black-clad soldiers came down with malaria and were taken out to the hospital in Thailand on gurney, one after another. Cambodian soldiers also got the cold but they receive care from doctors based at the top of the mountain. Nevertheless, frontline Cambodian soldiers complained that the tents they just received as donations were shredded by the strong wind, whereas other soldiers said that they do not have any hammock or cover blanket when they sleep at night time. Cambodian soldiers are calling on Cambodian leader to provide the necessary equipments they need. Most soldiers, especially frontline Cambodian soldiers posted next to Thai soldiers, lack hammocks, blankets, etc… to sleep at night time.