PHNOM PENH, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) is to launch a vigorous response to the worrying emergence of resistance to the anti-malarial drug artemisinin in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia, said the agency's statement on Tuesday.
The launch will be held in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on Thursday, the World Malaria Day, it said.
Artemisinin is the frontline drug in the fight against malaria. WHO said the emergence of resistance in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam poses a serious global health threat.
"We are taking the situation very seriously," Dr. Shin Young- soo, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific, said in the statement. "If resistance to artemisinin emerges elsewhere particularly in Africa, which has the world's greatest number of malaria cases the consequences for global health could be incalculable."
Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the most effective anti-malarial treatments available today, and they have been central to recent successes in global malaria control, it said, adding that Artemisinin-based combination therapies combine artemisinin a traditional Chinese herbal drug with another anti- malarial drug.
The artemisinin component kills the majority of parasites at the start of the treatment, while the partner drug clears the remaining parasites.
In response to the threat to resistance, WHO will launch its " Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance in the Greater Mekong Subregion" (ERAR) a strategic framework of support for the six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion.
Apart from the four affected countries, the region also includes China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Yunnan province and Laos both of them seen as potentially at risk of resistance to artemisinin in a region that is highly inter- connected, the statement said.
The launch will be accompanied by the setting-up of a WHO regional hub in Phnom Penh to provide coordination and support for the intensified containment efforts set out in the framework.
"The task is to contain resistance and then to eventually eliminate malaria from the region. For all this, we will need adequate financing," said Dr. Shin.
Dr. Char Meng Chuor, director of Cambodia's National Center for Malaria, said Cambodia recorded 69,515 malaria cases in 2012, killing 45 people.
The nation is expected to eradicate the death from malaria by 2015 and completely eliminate all forms of malaria by 2025.
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