Musa, thanks for this forward.  I hope African scientists can uncover this
herb on the continent.  If that is not the case, African governments
should make it their business to obtain the plants and grow them in
Africa.  That is how our governments can avoid spending billions in the
fight against Malaria.

Chi Jaama

Joe


> Chinese herb could prevent millions of deaths
> By Oliver August
> Farmers are converting entire valleys to an ancient crop
> that could save millions of lives
>
> XU WEIFENG was nearly killed by raging fever when he was
> six years old. He lay on a cot in the mountain hut of his
> corn farmer parents, seemingly destined to become one more
> unknown victim of malaria, the world’s second biggest
> killer after Aids.
> “Every day the fevers started around four in the afternoon,
> and for the next ten hours I would not know if I was
> dreaming or dying,” he recalled this week. Eventually a
> doctor gave him a concoction of local herbs and Xu quickly
> recovered. The remedy that cured him is known as
> artemisinin, and is now being hailed as a life-saver for
> millions of malaria victims in Africa.
>
> Artemisinin, first mentioned in Han Dynasty medical texts
> 2000 years ago, looks certain to replace the present
> remedies whose effectiveness is fast diminishing as malaria
> develops resistance to quinine. Despite extensive
> eradication efforts using quinine derivatives over the past
> 50 years, malaria kills a child every 30 seconds.
>
> The highly effective Chinese herb, known in English as
> sweet wormwood, is already being grown by the US Army at a
> secret laboratory in the state of Wisconsin for use by
> troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
> But the main growing region is a remote mountain range in
> central China, where farmers are now battling to satisfy
> the world’s sudden demand for the fern-like weed whose
> medical properties have long been known to local
> herbalists.
>
> The Beijing Government certified mass cultivation of
> artemisinin this week and the World Health Organisation
> (WHO) is planning to buy about 100 million doses of the
> drug from the Youyang region of Chongqing province by the
> end of 2005.
>
> Mr Xu, now 26, is one of the local farmers converting
> entire valleys into shoulder-high artemisinin fields. High
> above the gorges of the Wu river, for as far as you can
> see, hillsides are covered in a sea of lush green ferns.
>
>>From their scattered huts farmers wearing straw hats follow
> narrow paths through their shoulder-high crops. They will
> begin their harvest next week and, since the drug cannot be
> synthesised, 600 million African malaria sufferers — 10 per
> cent of the world’s population — are dependent on their
> success.
>
> “In this region at least, there is now no more malaria,” Mr
> Xu said.
>
> To promote the cultivation of artemisinin the Chinese
> Government this year completed a new road to Youyang,
> cutting travel time through narrow river gorges to the
> nearest airport from four days to six hours.
>
> “I guarantee we will provide enough land to grow
> artemisinin, no matter how great the demand of the
> international community,” said Gong Zemin, Youyang’s
> Communist party secretary. But in reform-minded China,
> party secretaries no longer have unlimited power over the
> economy. Local farmers need to agree to plant herbs instead
> of corn on their land, a switch many are reluctant to make
> since they do not yet trust official assurance of world
> demand.
>
> Holley, a Chinese pharmaceutical company that distributes
> artemisinin extract, is telling them income per hectare
> will increase by 150 per cent.
>
> “We hope to double the area under cultivation next year,
> but even that may not be enough to satisfy demand,” said
> Nelson Tan, Holley’s medical director.
>
> The sudden switch from quinine to artemisinin started with
> a Lancet article in January. A group of malaria experts
> accused leading aid agencies of gross negligence for
> insisting on using drugs to which infectious agents in
> large parts of Africa were now resistant.
>
> Britain’s Department of International Development had
> rejected switching to artemisinin saying it was unproven
> and expensive. Critics countered that at a dollar per saved
> life it was hardly unaffordable for the international
> community. The WHO backed them up with test results that
> showed the drug cut the death rate by 97 per cent. At a
> conference at New York’s Columbia University in April, the
> embarrassed aid agencies reversed their stance and embraced
> artemisinin — some at the last minute.
>
> Dr Dennis Carroll, an advisor to the US Agency for
> International Development, was quoted in the conference
> pamphlets as critical of artemisinin. By the time, the
> conference started, he was chairing a panel on how to
> induce farmers to plant more of it.
>
> Luo Rongchang, a Chinese medical researcher, said: “The
> herb is a powerful de-toxicant and has no side-effects.
> What a shame that it has taken the international community
> this long to realise its effectiveness.”
>
> The commercial development of artemisinin actually began
> with the Vietnam War when Ho Chi-Minh asked China for help
> with the Vietcong’s growing malaria problem in 1967.
> Beijing consulted ancient medical text which included
> mentions of “qinghao,” as artemisinin is known in Chinese.
> A scholar called Ge Hong (281-340 AD) recommended “a
> handful of qinghao in two pints of water”.
>
> Clinical forms of artemisinin were introduced in the 1980s
> but since China has relatively few cases of malaria it
> attracted little international attention until the growing
> resistance to quinine-based drugs.
>
> “Artemisinin will be the first Chinese herbal cure that not
> only complements Western medicine but actually replaces
> it,” Mr Tan said. A cowherd leads his animal through a
> field of sweet wormwood or artemisinin in a valley near
> Chongqing in Sichuan province. Artemisinin has become a
> lucrative crop for Chinese farmers in the region as they
> rush to grow enough of the plants for use in the fight
> against malaria. The fern-like weed, known as a medical
> remedy to the Chinese for at least 2,000 years, seems set
> to replace other drugs whose effectiveness against malaria
> is diminishing. The World Health Organisation says that it
> is the new gold standard for malaria treatment and a
> spokesman for the Department for International Development
> said: “It’s . . . the future of first-line treatment.”
>
> SILENT KILLER OF THE TROPICAL WORLD
>
> About 40 per cent of the world’s people — mostly in the
> poorest countries — are at risk of malaria
> The World Health Organisation estimates that malaria causes
> more than 300 million acute illnesses and at least one
> million deaths a year
> The combined death toll of the Commonwealth Forces — from
> all causes — in the two world wars was 1.7 million
> 75 per cent of deaths are African children, and malaria
> accounts for one in five of all childhood deaths in Africa
> The disease causes anaemia, low birth weight, epilepsy, and
> neurological problems, which compromise the health and
> development of millions of children throughout the tropical
> world
> The malaria parasite is transmitted through the bite of the
> female Anopheles mosquito.
> Inside the human host, the parasite invades red blood
> cells, where it multiplies and develops, finally bursting
> out of the cells ready to continue its life cycle in the
> gut of the next feeding mosquito
> Most deaths due to malaria are caused by the Plasmodium
> falciparum type of parasite. Burst red blood cells block
> blood vessels supplying the brain (cerebral malaria), or
> damage other vital organs
> The traditional antimalarial drug in the West, quinine, is
> derived from the South American cinchona tree
> Four Nobel prizes have been awarded for work associated
> with malaria, to: Sir Ronald Ross (1902), Charles Louis
> Alphonse Laveran (1907), Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1927) and
> Paul Hermann Muller (1948)
> Two patients contracted malaria while being treated at a
> hospital in Nottingham in 1999
> Artemisinin has become a lucrative crop for Chinese farmers
> in the region as they rush to grow enough of the plants for
> use in the fight against malaria. The fern-like weed, known
> as a medical remedy to the Chinese for at least 2,000
> years, seems set to replace other drugs whose effectiveness
> against malaria is diminishing. The World Health
> Organisation says that it is the new gold standard for
> malaria treatment and a spokesman for the Department for
> International Development said: “It’s . . . the future of
> first-line treatment.”
>
> Source:The Times Newspaper of 17/7/04.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW
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--
Chi Jaama
Joe Sambou

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