Today is the 91st birthday of Tu Youyou, recipient of the Order of the Republic. She discovered artemisinin, which can effectively reduce malaria mortality, and made a great contribution to the elimination of malaria in China.
By the way, let's talk about the story of malaria elimination.
Source: Screenshot of Weibo
Just this year, China received a malaria-free certification from WHO, becoming one of the few malaria-free countries and regions in the world to be free of malaria.
Many people may not know the greatness of this achievement, but if we look at the world, or turn back 70 years, malaria is a familiar demon that stays around us.
Malaria is a very old disease that spreads almost globally. Although the ancient chinese and foreign people also summarized many treatment and prevention programs for malaria, due to the limitations of the times, the malaria epidemic was not controlled, and "minduo malaria" often appeared in ancient records.
By the 1940s, there were 1,829 malaria-endemic districts and counties in the country, accounting for about 80% of the number of districts and counties at the time, with about 30 million infections and nearly 300,000 deaths each year.
The situation in China at that time was only a microcosm of the world's malaria epidemic. Malaria remains one of the most common diseases in the world today, with 229 million cases of malaria in 2019, nearly 30% more than the current cumulative covid-19 cases and causing 409,000 deaths. Children are the most vulnerable to malaria, with one child dying every 2 minutes.
If China doesn't do anything, China today could be as helpless as it was 70 years ago, allowing malaria to take the lives of its compatriots.
Thankfully, we made an effort and it was successful.
The first is to carry out a patriotic health campaign throughout the society to lay a good foundation for antimalarial resistance.
The whole society has taken action to gradually improve the level of the country's sanitary environment and reduce the living space of mosquitoes. At different stages of the sanitation campaign, various priorities such as cleaning the environment, eliminating garbage, and directly killing mosquitoes have contributed to reducing the number of mosquitoes. With fewer mosquito populations, malaria transmission is less reliable.
The second is to increase investment in preventive treatment drugs for malaria and continue to control the decline.
In 1967, the Chinese government launched the "523 Project", through a nationwide research program, pooled efforts, combined with multi-unit and multi-professional researchers, to find a new treatment for malaria, and finally discovered the miraculous antimalarial drug artemisinin in the 1970s. Widespread use relieves a large number of patients of suffering and reduces malaria-based Malaria Parasite.
Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT) remain the most effective antimalarial drugs to this day.
The first contribution to the discovery of artemisinin, Chinese pharmacist Ms. Tu Youyou, also won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for this major discovery.
Finally, a systematic multi-sectoral joint mechanism focuses on antimalarial and completes the door.
Through the implementation of the first two measures, malaria in China has entered the "control phase", which is only almost the icing on the cake.
With the support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, China has strengthened targeted training, staffing, laboratory equipment, medicines and mosquito control measures to ensure the rapid detection, treatment and prevention of malaria cases.
After discovery, a very efficient "1-3-7" strategy is carried out: direct reporting of malaria cases within 1 day after the discovery of the case, case review and epidemiological case investigation within 3 days, and investigation and disposal of epidemic sites within 7 days.
The areas with different malaria prevalence in the country are also divided into four categories, with different response measures and assessment systems, and precise prevention and control.
In this three-pronged approach, the incidence of malaria in China has once again dropped to a very low level, moving from the control stage to the elimination stage.
In 2016, only 3 cases of indigenous malaria were reported nationwide. There has not been a single case of indigenous malaria since August 2016. The certification criteria for malaria elimination were met when no new indigenous cases were reported for three consecutive years and a surveillance system was established to prevent the recurrence of local transmission, in accordance with the standards set by the World Health Organization. China has officially applied to WHO for national malaria elimination certification.
Pedro Alonso, Director of the World Health Organization's Global Malaria Programme, spoke highly of China's achievements and experience in eliminating malaria. "For decades, China has been making unremitting efforts to achieve practical results and has had an important impact on the global fight against malaria," he said. The exploration and innovation of the Chinese government and Chinese people has accelerated the pace of malaria elimination."
As a once terrible infectious disease, China has spent decades reducing the number of people infected with malaria from 30,000,000 to 0, which is described by WHO as a "remarkable feat".
And now we are constantly exporting our experience, striving to eliminate malaria from one country to the elimination of malaria in the world.
This article is co-authored by experts
This article is reviewed by experts
Planning and production
Curators: Jiu, Eric | Executive Producer: Feidi