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Banking on nothing

  • 14/06/2006

The World Bank has come up with a Global Strategy and Booster Program for the years 2005-2010 to control malaria. But Amir Attaran of the Institute of Population Health and Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada, has argued in The Lancet that the bank does not have the expertise to promote the right strategy. He says that in the past five years the bank has promoted obsolete treatment. Chloroquine resistance is associated with an increase of two to 11 times in malaria deaths, particularly in children. WHO has suggested use of ACT as the first-line treatment in areas where the pathogen has developed resistance to other drugs. More than 15 per cent of cases are resistant to conventional treatment. Disregarding this, in 2004, the bank approved purchases of chloroquine in its projects. In India, the government's official policy is to presumptively treat all malaria patients with chloroquine. The bank's information on India, as revealed in the Global Strategy and Booster Program, refers to 25 studies that show that chloroquine typically fails to treat 34 to 96 per cent of Indian malaria patients

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