Cambodian malaria deaths up 58 per cent

Earth Times
http://www.earthtimes.org

Wed, 05 Aug 2009
Author : DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials said the country's malaria death toll rose by 58 per cent in the first six months of this year because of the early onset of the rainy season and delays in distributing mosquito nets, local media reported Wednesday. Doung Socheat, director of the National Center for Parasitology Entomology and Malaria Control, said 103 people had died from malaria from January to June compared with 65 deaths in the same period last year, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

He said 27,105 people had contracted the illness in the first six months of this year, compared with 25,033 in the same period last year.

"This year, we had an early rainy season, and we were a bit late in distributing mosquito nets to people," Doung Socheat said.

The figures came a week after a study revealed an increased resistance to treatment in some malaria strains in Cambodia.

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, said the parasites showed resistance to artemisinin, the drug most commonly used to treat malaria.