Fight against malaria being undermined by some imported drugs

Dec 17, 2010 News

– Minister Ramsammy

Although the local health sector has over the years engaged a valiant battle against malaria, the efforts at the moment are not yielding the desired effects.
At least this is according to Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy who revealed that this year saw a reverse cycle in the prevalence of the vector borne disease.
The Health Minister pointed out that after a number of years of steady decline that saw the prevalence of malaria moving from 100,000 cases per year in the early 1990s to 48,000 cases around 2003 and 11,000 cases in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the incidence of the malaria this year has climbed to more than 15,000 thus far for this year.
“2010 has seen us moving in the opposite direction.
Whilst I am not reporting the final numbers at this time I can tell you that we will have an increase for this year and the number will move from what we had in the past two years.”
And while most of the cases occurred in the first half of the year, it was explained that the last three months of this year are revealing a similar uphill trend in terms of the 52 epidemiological weeks of the year.
“If we look from around the 33rd epidemiological week to where we are now around the 48th week, we will see that for the last 10 to 12 weeks the numbers are similar to 2008 and 2009…So most of the increase occurred in weeks one to 32.” Health workers, the minister said, have done an excellent job in bringing the state of malaria back to what was the 2008 through 2009 baseline. He noted further that although the incidence of malaria is observed primarily in mining communities it must not be deduced that the miners are responsible for its prevalence.
“We shouldn’t make it as if the miners are causing the problem, it is also our practices,” he insisted.
The minister stressed that the problem is that people are buying medicine from unauthorised sources such as the shops and not registered pharmacies.
He explained that it has been discovered that some shops have been selling part of the malaria treatment and not the recommended combination, thus creating a problem for persons infected with malaria.
As such he revealed that the Food and Drug Department has been instructed to seize all artemisinin monotherapy (malaria drug) in the shops, even if they are imported legally.
“They are going to be confiscated because it puts us at danger level. Not only that it is being bought by the private sector from entities that give reports of quality testing…What Guyana did this last six months is that we test the medicine that we import but we buy medicine from the shops and test them on site.”
However, should the belief exist that Guyana does not have the requisite capability to test the drugs, they are also sent abroad to be tested.
According to the Minister, USAID and PAHO/WHO have been working in collaboration with the Ministry in this regard.
“We are able to test the efficacy of the medicine that is available in the field from both the public and the private sector.”
In the past six months, of the 74 specimens that were taken from the public and private sectors that were submitted for testing, 14 of the artemisinin-based medicine have failed the test, Minister Ramsammy revealed.
He emphasised that as a result, people cannot simply trust the malaria medicine that they are buying in the private sector.
“We know where these are coming from and the Food and Drug Analyst Department has been having meetings with the Customs Department and we are going to insist that if medicine are coming from certain sources they will be held until we test that they are fit for distribution…We are not going to allow them to go into the public even if they come with certificates passing them.”

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Fight against malaria being undermined by some imported drugs

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