BANGKOK: Thailand battles drug resistant malaria strains that imperil global campaign “Once a smuggling stop for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guerrillas, Thailand’s border town of Bo Rai finds itself on the frontline of a new battle against drug resistant strains of malaria that could frustrate global attempts to stamp out the disease. Malaria killed about 445,000 people last year, more than 90 percent of them in sub Saharan Africa, but the figure has nearly halved since 2000. Now the hard won gains are at risk from the latest drug resistant form, which emerged in Cambodia before spreading to Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Department of Disease Control said on Wednesday at a seminar that the ministry has launched an anti insect borne diseases campaign to eliminate dengue and malaria since October, expecting to drive out malaria by 2021 and reduce the number of dengue patients by 25 percent by then.
