Expatica news

Belgian firm unveils ‘miracle’ malaria cure

11 November 2005

BRUSSELS — Belgian pharmaceutical firm Dafra Pharma has developed a medicine it claims can easily cure malaria sufferers.

The Turnhout-based company said the drug — based on a Chinese medicinal herb — was a medical breakthrough because infected patients can be cured in one day.

Moreover, the patient no longer has to be admitted to hospital. Current treatment methods take much longer and a far more complicated, broadcaster VRT reported.

The product is also very cheap, priced at just EUR 1 or 50 euro cents for child doses. It is thus ideal for the African market, where the highest number of malaria victims is recorded.

Dafra Pharma is currently compiling documentation to allow for the export of the drug. In 2006, the company hopes to release the medicine on the African market.
 
Some 1.5 million people die from malaria each year. In Africa, official estimates suggest a child under five years of age dies every 30 seconds from malaria.

Mounting resistance to existing treatments and problems associated with post-treatment relapses have rendered more conventional therapies increasingly ineffective.

Dafra Pharma’s new medicine will be unveiled on 14 November at the Multilateral Initiative for Malaria (MIM) Congress in Yaounde, Cameroon, which some 2,000 scientists will attend, Yahoo news reported.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

Subject: Belgian news