The Great Malaria Debate at JITTM Bangkok

29 Jan 2015

WWARN Published Date

20 Dec 2013

WWARN and the Faculty of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University, Thailand recently organised The Great Malaria Debate: Eliminating Artemisinin Resistant Malaria from Southeast Asia during the 2013 Joint International Tropical Medicine Meeting (JITMM) held in Bangkok, Thailand between 11-13 December.

The debate provided a platform for experts to present the scientific, social, economic, and political challenges faced in trying to eliminate artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum malaria and provoked innovative ideas for overcoming these challenges.

Debate teams included Prof. Chris Plowe (University of Maryland / HHMI) and Prof. Nick White (MORU and the Wellcome Trust) arguing for elimination and Ivo Mueller (Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne) and Jetsumon Prachumsri (Mahidol Faculty of Tropical Medicine) arguing against.

Key points raised were as follows:

For

• Malaria has been eliminated in a number of countries with high burden previously;

• Tools needed to identify artemisinin resistant parasites are becoming available;

• Targeted malaria elimination (or mass drug administration) is now being evaluated in the region;

Against

• There is not enough time to scale up elimination activities before artemisinin drugs lose efficacy (and spread westerly outside South East Asia);

• There are not enough financial or human resources available;

• There are no non-artemisinin compounds available for the longer-term (i.e., resistance is already developing to Malarone in areas of Cambodia where it is being used).

At the end the debate, all participants agreed that is will be extremely difficult to eliminate ACT-resistant parasites from the Mekong, but that it is worth trying. Prof. Nick White emphasized that the biggest challenge will be garnering the support of national governments and policy-makers to support elimination strategies across the region.

We hope to organise another debate at an international conference in 2014 - contact us to find out more on email: info@wwarn.org