Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Ancient Chinese secret
After years of hesitation, world health agencies are racing to acquire 100 million doses of a Chinese herbal drug that has proved strikingly effective against malaria, one of the leading killers of the poor.
The drug, artemisinin (pronounced are-TEM-is-in-in), is a compound based on qinghaosu, or sweet wormwood. First isolated in 1965 by Chinese military researchers, it cut the death rate by 97 percent in a malaria epidemic in Vietnam in the early 1990's.
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Artemisinin, which has no significant side effects, quickly reduces fevers and rapidly lowers blood-parasite levels, which can keep small outbreaks in mosquito-infested areas from becoming epidemics.
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The price of artemisinin cocktails has fallen from $2 per treatment to 90 cents or less as more companies in China, India and Vietnam have begun making them. (Older drugs cost only 20 cents.) Novartis, the Swiss drug giant, sells its artemisinin-lumefantrine mix, Coartem, to poor countries for 10 cents less than it costs to make, a company official said. The same drug, under the name Riamet, is sold to European travelers for about $20.
As a plant material, artemisinin cannot be patented, said Dr. Allan Schapira, a policy specialist for the Roll Back Malaria campaign of the World Health Organization. Nor can the simple extraction process. Some synthetics, he said, are old and off patent, which public health officials like but pharmaceutical companies do not, because they make a larger profit from drugs on which they have patent monopolies.
Story.
posted by chris at 4:56 PM
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