PHA-Exchange> Herbal Vietnam War remedy key to cheap malaria cure - artemisinin

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Herbal Vietnam War remedy key to cheap malaria cure

GUANGZHOU, China - An ancient herbal remedy adapted by Chinese
scientists
to help Vietnamese communists defeat the Americans in the 1960s is the
key
ingredient in a cheap malaria cure that is being backed by the World
Health Organization.

Already available in China, Artekin is now being mass-produced in
preparation for its international launch in two months' time. It will
go
on sale in South East Asia first, prior to its planned release
internationally.

The WHO hopes that the drug's price -- expected to be as little as
$1.56
Cdn -- and efficacy will finally provide an affordable cure to a
disease
that claims more than one million lives a year across the world.

Recent tests indicated that Artekin cures nearly 100 per cent of
patients
and kills the blood parasite so quickly that it cannot build up
resistance. By contrast, chloroquine -- the most common anti-malarial
drug
available -- has a success rate of less than 40 per cent.

The brainchild of Professor Li Guoqiao, from the Guangzhou University
of
Traditional Chinese Medicine, Artekin has been 30 years in the making.
The
drug's origins lie in Project 523 -- a secret military outfit that was
set
up in 1967 to help the Vietnamese communists defeat the Americans.

"The biggest enemy for both the Americans and the Vietnamese was
malaria.
Project 523 was set up to help the Vietnamese military defeat malaria,"
said Li, who joined 523 at its inception.

He spent the next seven years trying to find a cure. Then, on a trip to
the mountainous Yunnan province in 1974, he came across a plant called
qinghao -- which was first mentioned as a cure for malaria in Chinese
medicine books dating from 340 BC.

The plant extract is called artemisinin and Li was astonished to see
that
it could even cure patients with advanced cases of complicated malaria,
such as the cerebral version, which are usually fatal.

The Vietnamese used the compound for their troops in the final stages
of
the Vietnam War.

Li made his breakthrough in 1997 when he used artemisinin in
conjunction
with western synthetic drugs to create Artekin.