[Malaria] Chinese firm launches malaria drug

from The Eastern Standard

A Chinese pharmaceutical company has launched a new drug to fight malaria in the Great Lakes Region.

Top managers of Beijing Holley-Cotec Pharmaceuticals Company say the new combination therapy drug conformed to the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.

"In line with the WHO recommendation to combine all artemisinin anti-malaria derivatives, the company formulated the new combination drug, duo-Cotecxin," said Joseph Mu, the company sales director during its launch in Nairobi on Wednesday.

"The drug has already proven very effective and is only a three-day treatment course, taken three tablets on day one and two, then two tablets on day three."

Sources say the WHO has been pushing pharmaceutical companies to develop single dose drugs that can fight the killer disease, especially for children under five years.

Currently, the Government required over Sh100 million to fight malaria. Malaria affects over four million people and accounts for more than 50 per cent of in-patients in public hospitals.

It also kills over 30,000 people in the country annually and more than one million across the African continent.

"We shall use Kenya to reach out to other countries in the region," said Mu.