If all goes well, it is impossible to over-estimate how big a deal this is. Researchers in South Africa report that they have developed a single dose instant cure for malaria. Malaria is a disease that is estimated to kill circa 750,000 people a year, most of them children in Africa.
CAPE TOWN (2012-08-28): The University of Cape Town’s Science Department believes that it has found a single dose cure for Malaria. This was announced by researchers that have been working on this compound, from the aminopyridine class, for several years. Unlike conventional multidrug malaria treatments that the malaria parasite has become resistant to, Professor Kelly Chibale and his colleagues now believe that they have discovered a drug that over 18 months of trials ”killed these resistant parasites instantly”. Animal tests also showed that it was not only safe and effective, but there were no adverse reported side effects. Clinical tests are scheduled for the end of 2013. If this tablet is approved in coming years, this achievement will surely usher in a new age for science in Africa. It will save millions upon millions of lives on the continent, helping avoid at least 24 percent of child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Chibale proudly explains: “This is the first ever clinical molecule that’s been discovered out of Africa, by Africans, from a modern pharmaceutical industry drug discovery programme. The potent drug has been tested on animals and has shown that a single oral dose has completely cured those infected with malaria parasites.” This “super pill” could potentially cure millions of people every year, and save the lives of over one million people from around the world each year. This “cure” will most likely save health care systems throughout the developing world billions of dollars and open new areas for development and settlement.
Millions of people have died unnecessarily from this disease over the last 40 years because of bad science. Maybe now some good science will save lives.
August 31, 2012 at 11:39 am
WOW, now missionaries to Africa will no longer have to suffer from malaria. Praise God.
September 2, 2012 at 2:28 am
@Mary De Voe: more to the point, now millions of people won't die from a disease we should've cured decades ago, if it hadn't been for "Silent Spring" and environmental alarmism.
Some few of those saved, will be missionaries. Though if Isaac Jogues is any indication, bearing the suffering of a disease (or in his case, being tortured, twice, the second time to death) tends to impress those who witness it (I think at least one of the guys who martyred Jogues converted soon after).
Especially in Africa, where many societies' conception of dignity, for men at least, is inextricably linked to the "martial" virtues—Zulus, for example, consider it unmanly even to show fear.