Kenya will replace the use of sulphur-based drugs in the treatment of malaria from next month with more effective artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) , said the country's top physician James Nyikal Friday.

Nyikal, the Director of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health, said sulphur-based drugs (SPs), which have been in use for the past two years, have developed vector resistance.

Artemisinin was developed from a Chinese herb to counter the malaria parasite's growing resistance to earlier treatments, including chloroquine. Malaria experts have recommended that artemisinin be used in combination with other effective antimalarials. The result is a treatment that has proven 90 percent effective in tests conducted on nearly every continent.

Nyikal said the new drugs, scheduled to arrive by mid May, would be available in all public facilities, adding that ACTs will replace drugs such as the widely used Fansidar and Metakelfin.

"Once we receive the stocks of ACTs we have ordered, we will replace the sulphur-based drugs because it is worrying to hear that out of every four persons treated, one will not recover," Nyikal told Xinhua by telephone.

He said sulphur-based antimalarials would continue to be used to treat cases of malaria among pregnant women and children. The safety of ACTs on pregnant women and children under the weight of 10 kg has not been conclusively proven.

The government has earmarked some 1.5 billion shillings (about 21 million U.S. dollars) for the purchase of ACTs, and 10,000 health workers will be trained on how to administer them, at a cost of 150 million shillings (about 2 million dollars), he said.

The Kenyan government would use money disbursed through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to subsidize the cost of the new treatment, which is 10 to 15 times more expensive than other drugs.

In Kenya, malaria is the leading cause of death of children under five years, resulting in an estimated 34,000 deaths annually. More than 22 million people are at risk of infection, 75 percent of them residing in rural areas.

Malaria is caused by microscopic parasites that are transmitted from person to person by female anopheline mosquitoes. The disease is widespread mainly in poorer tropical areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria threatens approximately 2 billion to 3 billion people annually, or roughly 40 percent of the world's population, and inflicts approximately 500 million clinical attacks each year.

Source: Xinhua