june 2021 WHO announces china becomes 40th country to end malaria- i am sure fazle abed would be applauding - chinese village women were the main ones on continent of asia to open source solutions with bangladesh women - brac's networks fighting malaria in bangladesh
globally killing 400000 people a year, malaria can be described as a poverty disease particularly targeting infants
as this science article clarifies notable steps in china's malaria ending journey:
30 million cases in the 1940s, including 300,000 deaths, to zero in 2017 onwards.
China launched a program to identify new malaria drugs in the late 1960s. As part of that effort, pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou screened traditional Chinese medicine concoctions for compounds active against malaria, eventually isolating artemisinin from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua). Artemisinin became the key compound in the front-line drugs now used against malaria and won Tu a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015. China was also among the countries pioneering the use of insecticide-treated nets in the 1980s.
ENDING LAST CASES ALWAYS DIFFICULT- INNOVATION BY CHINA
Annual case numbers dropped over the years, reaching roughly 5000 annually in the late 1990s. In 2012, the country initiated a push to eliminate malaria with a “1-3-7” strategy, allowing local health facilities 1 day to report a malaria diagnosis, 3 days to investigate the case, and 7 days to implement countermeasures. In recent years, Chinese scientists have developed genetics-based approaches to track drug resistance and to distinguish indigenous cases from imported ones...To win certification a program must be demonstrated to prevent the reestablishment of malaria, a particular challenge because China shares borders with three countries where the disease is endemic: Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos.
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