By Daniel Rook (AFP)
SAI YOK, Thailand — At a remote medical outpost near the jungle-blanketed Thai-Myanmar border, a villager pricks the finger of a feverish baby living on the frontline of the war on drug-resistant malaria.
The tiny walk-in clinic -- and hundreds more like it scattered along Thailand's porous frontiers -- are a key part of efforts to stop the spread of the lethal new strain from Southeast Asia to the Indian subcontinent and Africa.
For more than a decade, the fast-acting treatment artemisinin has been Thailand's most potent weapon in the long-running battle against malaria, contributing to a sharp drop in the number of deaths.
It is the most commonly used drug worldwide against a mosquito-borne disease that infects 216 million people and claims 655,000 lives around the globe each year.
But after artemisinin-defying parasites emerged on the Thai-Cambodian border about eight years ago -- and were later discovered in western Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam -- fears are growing that the wonder drug is losing its potency.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gsKMyARAQY8P6TXKtNFuT7VYSfQg?docId=CNG.51e48cd45477d2dda0ed82b302bc8cad.2a1
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