The longer we allow chloroquine to be in the system, the harder it will be to get rid of malaria - WHO

Dr. Robert Newman, Director, Global Malaria Programme at the World Health Organization has told HealthNewsNG that the continual existence of chloroquine as an antimalarial agent in some countries is a major setback towards the eradication of the preventable and treatable disease. 

"The longer we allow drugs like chloroquine to be in the system, the harder it will be to get rid of malaria because those people are not getting effectively treated. They’ll be transmitting malaria through mosquitoes to other people. We need to take the longer view which is that chloroquine has a very high cost on the society over a long period of time," he told HealthNewsNG.

To discourage people from using chloroquine he said requires the involvement of all stakeholders in the deployment of various tools.

"We need public education, regulation, enforcement, and continuing to work at a global level to make accepted medicines as affordable as possible. I don’t think the cost is unaffordable at the society level to ensure that everyone with confirmed malaria actually gets adequate treatment," Robert said.

He however revealed that there is little that WHO can do since much of the necessary steps are to be taken by the ministries of health in the various countries where chloroquine is still being used in the treatment of malaria.

"This is where WHO’s work stops and the countries' work has to begin. We have long recommended not using chloroquine in Africa, we have said it’s not effective. The thing about chloroquine is that it only has the intrinsic property of reducing the fever; it doesn’t kill the malaria parasite. But many people think chloroquine is effective because the fever has dropped but the drug has done nothing about the malaria. It is still there. 

"This feature has allowed many people to insist it works for them while in the real sense it is not useful.

 It’s a big problem and it’s one that I think requires urgent action from any country that still maintains chloroquine in the system. In the case of many countries there is already a policy discouraging chloroquine usage so it’s not a problem of policy but the enforcement of policies. This is the challenge and we are turning back to the countries and say they should work with drug regulatory authorities with the enforcement capacity and ensure combination therapy totally replace chloroquine in the treatment of malaria," he told HealthNewsNG. 

One measure he said the WHO is championing is further reduction in the cost of combination therapy.

"It’s a really challenging issue but to say the truth, the price of the combination therapy has reduced drastically. The prices are now a fraction of what they once were. In many countries, malaria treatment has become a public health issue. We don’t charge people to immunize them so why should we charge them to treat their children for malaria? 

"Treatment in most developing countries is free-of-charge especially for children under the age of five. The more we can make free treatment available, the more we will be able to drive ineffective drugs out of the system. We need to look at the longer view of cost."