A study has found malaria parasites resistant to key drugs are spreading rapidly in South East Asia, with half of patients in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam not responding to first-choice treatment.
Professor Olivo Miotto, from the University of Oxford, says the “resistant parasite strain is capable of invading new territories and acquiring new genetic properties.
A similar resistance to a long-time front-line malaria drug, chloroquine, contributed to millions of deaths across Africa in the 1980s.