Malaria Showing Signs of Drug Resistance

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There's evidence that malaria in some parts of Cambodia is becoming resistant to front-line artemesinin drugs, a situation that needs to be contained because full-blown resistance would pose a serious worldwide health crisis, scientists warn.

Until now, these drugs cleared all the malaria parasites from a patient's blood within two or three days. But two teams of scientists conducting research in western Cambodia have found this process can now take four or five days, BBC News reported.

It's not clear why this resistance appears to be developing in this region of Cambodia, but the use of anti-malaria drugs isn't properly controlled and the local public health system is weak. Currently, malaria kills about a million people a year. About half the world's population faces exposure to malaria, BBC News reported.