Another World Malaria Day passed away on April 25 with expressions of concerns and commitments by international bodies and governments of affected countries. The World Health Organization urged for more investments towards malaria control and elimination programmes in the poor countries. Three out of four people are at risk of malaria in South-East Asia Region, home to a quarter of the world's population. Global efforts to control and eliminate malaria have saved a total of 3.3 million lives so far. According to the WHO’s World Malaria Report, 2013, deaths caused by malaria came down by 42% globally between 2000 and 2012 and the incidence of malaria decreased by 25%. But the whatever gains in malaria control could be reversed due to increasing parasite resistance to drugs, mosquito resistance to insecticides and re-emergence of transmission in places where the disease has been eliminated. Now, the emergence of artemisinin resistance in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam threatens the global achievements in malaria control and its elimination. Artemisinin-based combination treatment is currently the first line treatment for the most lethal type of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum and resistance to this drug would compromise the lives of hundreds of thousands of people affected by malaria. Another danger lies in the fact that the Anopheles mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites are increasingly become resistant to insecticides.
In India, with almost 95% of country’s population living in malaria-endemic areas and an estimated one million new cases reported each year, this disease continues to be a big challenge for the nation’s healthcare system. The Union health ministry, however, claims that the malaria deaths came down by half in the past decade with its increased control efforts, a shift in drug policy mandating use of top-line Artemisinin-based combination therapies, greater community participation and industry engagement. Perhaps a key reason for not achieving effective control over malaria worldwide is non availability of new drugs to combat the disease. Chloroquin, the last drug from the global pharmaceutical industry for the treatment of the disease, was invented more than half a century ago in 1947. This and other old drugs are found to be ineffective on majority of malaria affected patients today. Despite such continuing misery in these poor countries, no serious attempt has been made by the global pharmaceutical industry to find a new molecule for treating or preventing malaria. There is however a ray of hope for the malaria affected countries with the expected launch of a malaria vaccine next year by GSK. The results of a phase III trial of the drug candidate, RTS,S, show that the malaria vaccine candidate provided significant protection against clinical and severe malaria with an acceptable safety and tolerability profile. The vaccine is being developed by GSK and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), together with prominent African research centres. The partners are all represented on the Clinical Trials Partnership Committee which is conducting the trial. Funding support for clinical development is mainly from a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to MVI.