Drug-resistant malaria spreading fast in South-East Asia

A multidrug-resistant strain of malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, spreading rapidly out of Cambodia since 2015 is now entrenched in Laos and Vietnam and threatens to move out of South-East Asia into Africa and other parts of Asia, according to scientists who have conducted two new studies. The new P. falciparum strain, which is resistant to artemisinin and its widely used partner drug piperaquine, represents more than 80 per cent of parasites circulating in northeast Thailand and Vietnam, while artemisinin resistance has been confirmed in Myanmar. Of the four types of malaria parasites, P. falciparum is most likely to cause life-threatening complications.