For five years, his son, An, now 19, and daughter, Sreyna, now 12, remained infected because no effective treatment was available, he told VOA Khmer. "Sometimes the disease is healed for one month, but it would come back in the next two months," he said, adding they both exhibited high fevers and chills. His children, who work in banana plantations, were in and out of clinics, and "after they took medicines, they would be fine for a period of time, then they would have to go to the hospital if they were in serious condition," Aun said. The family resorted to hospitals infrequently, because transportation cost 200,000 riel to 300,000 riel (or about $50 to $75). Researchers are increasingly alarmed by the emergence of a strain of drug-resistant malaria in Cambodia, a so-called "superbug" that stares down the most commonly used anti-malaria drugs.
A malaria patient rests in the only hospital in Pailin, western Cambodia.
The superbug, first identified in 2008 in Cambodia, has spread into parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. Last month, scientists from the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) published a letter in The Lancet saying the superbug's spread throughout the Mekong area was a serious threat to malaria control and eradication. "A single mutant strain of very drug resistant malaria has now spread from western Cambodia to north-eastern Thailand, southern Laos and into southern Vietnam and caused a large increase in treatment failure of patients with malaria," says letter co-author Arjen Dondorp, and Oxford professor, in a MORU release. MORU is a collaborative effort involving Thailand's Mahidol University, Oxford University and the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust. "We are losing a dangerous race," Nicholas White, one of the letter's co-authors, said in the release. "The spread of this malaria 'superbug' has caused an alarming rise in treatment failures forcing changes in drug policy and leaving few options for the future."
Local officials not concerned
Huy Rekol, director of Cambodia's National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control (CNM), said he was not worried by the drug-resistant malaria. "In our country, we don't need to worry about matters of death or resistance because we have efficient drugs to use every day," he said. Malaria in Cambodia is caused by two types of viruses transmitted by female mosquitoes, according to the CNM. It identified several factors leading to a rise in malaria infections in 2015, including increasing mobility of people living in malaria-affected areas. Rekol said that about 10,000 infections were detected in 2017, but all those identified as contracting malaria were treated. He said that any resistance was "manageable," adding that more should be done to prevent transmission in the first place.
A village malaria worker shows his malaria medicine kit at O'treng village on the outskirts of Pailin, Cambodia
Nguyen Thi Khe, a former official at the government Institute of Public Hygiene, told VOA Vietnamese that malaria was "not a serious issue in Vietnam right now," a sentiment that was repeated by other officials. Dondorp said it was worrying that Cambodian malaria officials appeared to be unconcerned by the reports of drug resistance, which he said could undo the gains of recent years. "In northeastern Thailand, Srisaket province is affected, almost all of Cambodia is affected, as well as southern Laos, and South Vietnam," Dondorp said in an email to VOA. In an email, he said, "The evolution and subsequent transnational spread of this single fit multidrug-resistant malaria parasite lineage is of international concern."
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