No worry about 'Super Malaria'

Country's disease monitoring wing -- Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) -- yesterday rebuffed the hype about the “Super Malaria”, saying that there is nothing to worry about the bug right now.

"We have malaria cases in certain regions in our country, but there is nothing to worry about the Super Malaria here," Dr ASM Alamgir, senior scientific officer of IEDCR, told BSS.

"The disease was common on the Mekong sub region of Southeast Asia, but now the virus of the disease became resistant to traditional drugs. As a result, it is spreading rapidly in that region," he added.

"The first treatment for malaria is artemisinin in combination with piperaquine. But since artemisinin has become less effective, the malaria virus has now evolved to resist piperaquine too," says an international journal.

The disease is spreading swiftly along the Southeast Asia region and experts fear that it can reach further up to Africa, say different international media outlets. According to the World Health Organisation, Malaria is a public health problem in Bangladesh, which is highly endemic in 13 border districts having international boundaries with India's eastern states Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya and Myanmar.