Antimalarial drug resistance emerges

There is an increasing level of resistance to one type of antimalarial drug in parts of Africa, a new study has found.

New research from scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine revealed that resistance to sulfadoxine has emerged independently.

This has occurred over the last two decades and the level of resistance has been found to vary in different areas from east to west Africa.

Due to this, it has been suggested that a campaign to control malaria may be more effective if it was carried out across the continent in socio-economically linked areas, rather than just in national territories.

Commenting on the findings, Tim Anderson of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, said: "This unusually large data set provides an extraordinarily fine-grained view of the spread of resistance alleles across Africa."

The type of malaria proving to be resistant to control by sulfadoxine is called plasmodium falciparum.

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