ONE rare piece of good news about malaria is that we have a very successful drug for treating it. Artemisinin, an extract of the sweet wormwood plant, has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries to treat fever. Derivatives of it, taken for about three days, make very effective anti-malarials.
That these compounds work is no longer in doubt, nor is the futility of sticking with chloroquine, the traditional treatment. Over the past 15 years the malaria parasites’ resistance to chloroquine has rendered the drug impotent in many parts of the world, especially Africa. To prevent similar resistance developing…
