Millions of lives at risk as drug resistant malaria spreads across Burma towards India border 

  • Scientists discover strain of parasite that is totally resistant to treatment
  • It has now been located just 15 miles from Burma's border with India
  • Experts say it is an 'alarming' development and an 'enormous threat' 
  • Malaria kills an estimated 600,000 people around the world every year 
By Laurie Hanna For Mailonline
Published: 00:01 GMT, 20 February 2015 | Updated: 14:11 GMT, 20 February 2
Malaria that is completely resistant to drug treatment could soon spread into India putting millions of lives at risk, scientists have warned. 
Experts have discovered a strain of the parasite in Burma that is totally resistant to the antimalarial drug artemisinin, which they have described as an 'enormous threat'.
Worryingly, the resistant parasites have been found just 15 miles from the country's border with India in an 'alarming development'.  
Danger: Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and scientists say the resistant parasites found in the Saigang region of Burma, just 15 miles from India, in an 'alarming development'
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Danger: Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and scientists say the resistant parasites found in the Saigang region of Burma, just 15 miles from India, in an 'alarming development'
If the spread of artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites were to reach into India, that would pose a serious threat to the chances of global control of the killer disease. 
Philippe Guerin, director of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, said: 'The pace at which artemisinin resistance is spreading or emerging is alarming.' 
'We need a more vigorous international effort to address this issue in border regions.'  
In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, experts collected 940 parasite samples at 55 malaria treatment centres across Burma - also known as Myanmar - and its border regions.
Similar strains have also been detected in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. 
They found that almost 40 percent of the samples had mutations in their so-called kelch gene, K13 -- a known genetic signal of artemisinin drug resistance.
Charles Woodrow of the Mahidol-Oxford tropical medicine research unit led the study at Oxford University, said: 'Myanmar is considered the front line in the battle against artemisinin resistance as it forms a gateway for resistance to spread to the rest of the world.'
If resistance spreads from Asia to Africa, or emerges in Africa independently, 'millions of lives will be at risk', the report said.
Deaths from malaria have nearly halved since 2000, and the infection now kills an estimated 600,000 people each year - most of them children in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Fatal: Malaria kills an estimated 600,000 people each year - most of them children in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa
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Fatal: Malaria kills an estimated 600,000 people each year - most of them children in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa
Woodrow noted that thanks to advances in the science of genetic analysis, researchers tracking artemisinin antimalarials are in 'the unusual position of having molecular markers for resistance before resistance has spread globally'.
He added: 'The more we understand about the current situation...the better prepared we are to adapt and implement strategies to overcome the spread of further drug resistance.'
From the late 1950s to the 1970s, chloroquine-resistant malaria spread across Asia to Africa, leading to a resurgence of cases and millions of deaths.
Chloroquine was replaced by sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), but resistance to SP subsequently emerged in western Cambodia and again spread to Africa. SP was replaced by artemisinin combination treatment, or ACT, and experts now worry that history may repeat itself yet again.