Friday is World Malaria Day, an awareness campaign by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to focus on one of the world’s greatest killers. The statistics are frightening, but the reality of the disease is worse.
Within Thailand and around the world, efforts continue to find a treatment for this invidious, insidious illness. Each year on World Malaria Day, experts attempt to convince us that a preventative, a cure or a treatment is close. They have been wrong every year.
According to the WHO, 600,000 people will come down with malaria today. Mostly they will be children. The symptoms are terrible: deep chills, very high fevers, sweating and harsh headaches that spread pain to every bone in the body. Of the 600,000 who begin to have these symptoms today, about 1,800 will soon be dead — a toll of 660,000 per year.
Malaria was once thought be be extinct in Thailand. Effective anti-malarial programmes in the 1960s largely eradicated the anopholes mosquito. Most of those health programmes involved spraying with the chemical DDT. After strong protests by environmentalists, DDT has been largely banned or sidelined. Refugees brought malaria back to Thailand, where it is mainly confined to known, dangerous areas along the Myanmar and Cambodia borders. About 20,000 Thais will contract malaria this year, as they did last year. Public health officials consider Thailand lucky, because no one has died of malaria so far this year.
Most malaria deaths are among the relatively weak. The very young and very old are most at risk of dying, the poverty-stricken even more so. But the disease itself threatens all, as do two allied diseases carried by blood-sucking insects, dengue and chikungunya. Dengue has become a scourge in Thailand. In 2013, there were 153,765 cases and 132 deaths reported across the country. Chikungunya, transmitted like dengue by the Aedes mosquito, is still relatively rare.
Malaria is frightening, threatening and alarming because it is, in scientific terms, “efficient”. More than any other major illness that takes a human toll malaria has defeated drug after drug, medical defence after medical defence. Medical authorities in just two generations have seen malaria defeat drugs from quinine to today’s most advanced laboratory productions. They predict there could soon be no effective medical treatment for the disease.
In Thailand, anti-mosquito programmes are patchy and tend to be localised. This, in some ways, benefits the insects carrying such diseases. By going after mosquitoes only every so often, or only in certain locations, authorities actually contribute to the increasing immunity of the insects to chemical sprays. The main fight against malaria in Africa is by charity groups handing out mosquito nets treated with DDT or similar chemicals.
In Thailand, the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NASTDA) has been working since 1999 with Switzerland's Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). In 15 years, they have come up with no actual drug for treatment or prevention of malaria. Earlier this week, Sumalee Kamchonwongpaisan, chief of the research and development team, said she believes research into bending proteins is showing promise. Human testing could proceed in a few years if the research results continue to be positive.
With no certain way to prevent malaria, dengue and the like, and with little help available medically for those stricken, authorities advise the best thing anyone can do is try to avoid mosquitoes. Body sprays, lotions, netting, fancy lighting, smoky coils and much more is part of this effort. But the chances of success against malaria remain as slim as ever.