On June 30, local time, the World Health Organization announced that China has officially obtained the WHO malaria elimination certification, praising China's 70 years of unremitting efforts from 30 million malaria infection cases per year in the 1940s to the current complete elimination, which is a remarkable achievement.
"If the miracle has color, it must be Chinese red!"
After the WHO issued the national malaria elimination certification to China, the topic immediately rushed to the hot search and received a large number of enthusiastic confessions from netizens: "This is China's speed!" "I love you China!" Some netizens commented: "If the miracle has color, it must be Chinese red!" "One comment garnered more than 20,000 likes because he spoke to every one of our Chinese. Tu Youyou, a Chinese scientist who discovered that artemisinin has made great contributions to the global fight against malaria, has also been mentioned and thanked by many netizens.
For a vast country of 1.4 billion people, the complete elimination of malaria is truly a remarkable achievement. As Chinese, we are proud from the bottom of our hearts!
The fight against malaria has been going on for thousands of years, what remarkable contribution has our country made to eradicating malaria?
Malaria – the infectious disease that humans have been fighting for millennia
Malaria, one of the world's leading causes of death from infectious diseases, is an insect-borne infectious disease caused by infection with malaria parasites through the bite or transfusion of the blood of people with Plasmodium malaria. WHO refers to malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS as the three major global public health problems.
As a major global infectious disease, malaria has always threatened human health and has been widely endemic in our country. According to who's Global Malaria Report 2020, 229 million cases of malaria were reported globally in 2019, and more than 409 000 people died of malaria.
More than half a century of war "malaria" history - reduced from 30 million to 0
Malaria prevention and control in China has experienced more than half a century of arduous struggle.
In the 1950s, about 80% of the counties and districts with malaria epidemics in China reached the highest number of patients per year, with a mortality rate of about 1%, and the number of patients ranked first among various infectious diseases.
After 2000, although the epidemic situation in China has declined, it is still in an unstable situation.
In 2010, 95 per cent of the country's 24 malaria-endemic provinces had fallen to less than one in 10,000 malaria rates.
In 2010, in response to the United Nations global malaria eradication initiative, China formulated the China Malaria Elimination Action Plan (2010-2020), which set the goal of achieving national malaria elimination by 2020.
In 2015, China has controlled the local spread of malaria in border areas such as Yunnan and Tibet, and imported from abroad has become the main source of malaria cases.
In 2017, China achieved for the first time that there were no local malaria cases reported in the whole year.
According to WHO standards, a country or region has no indigenous malaria cases for three consecutive years, and establishes an effective malaria rapid detection and monitoring system, and formulates a malaria prevention and control plan to obtain malaria elimination certification. China has reported no local primary malaria cases for four consecutive years since 2017 and formally applied to WHO for national malaria elimination certification last year.
IN AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "China's success has not been easy to come by, mainly thanks to China's decades of sustained precision prevention and control. ”
Artemisinin, a new antimalarial weapon - China's gift to the world
In 1972, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou led a team to discover artemisinin, finding a new weapon against malaria for all mankind.
In the 1960s, under the background that the original antimalarial drug chloroquine had become ineffective and human beings were suffering from malaria, Tu Youyou accepted the arduous task of antimalarial research in the office of the national malaria control project "523" and was appointed as the leader of the antimalarial team of traditional Chinese medicine.
Tu Youyou sought inspiration from the research classics of Traditional Chinese Medicine, sorted out 640 prescriptions, and conducted more than 300 screening experiments successively, determining the research direction mainly based on chinese medicine Artemisia annua. Among the attempts she has made, Artemisia annua ranks 191st.
The effort paid off, and the project team finally obtained a neutral extract of artemisin ether with a 100% suppression rate for malaria. In order to go to the malaria-endemic areas of The country to try it as soon as possible, Tu Youyou and the members of the research group "tried the medicine by example" and became the first volunteers.
Tu Youyou herself also won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for creating new antimalarial drugs - artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, making Chinese medicine shine on the world stage.
On December 10, 2015 local time, Nobel Laureate Tu Youyou received the prize.
Since 2000, artemisininoids have been the antimalarial drug of choice by the World Health Organization. Between 2010 and 2017, countries procured more than 2.7 billion artemisinin-based combination courses, 98% of which were used in the WHO Africa Region, giving hope to a continent that has long been plagued by malaria "death".
Artemisinin is undoubtedly a gift from China to the world. According to WHO, between 2000 and 2015, the global incidence of malaria fell by 37%, the mortality rate of malaria patients fell by 60%, and 6.2 million lives were saved globally, and hundreds of millions of patients were treated each year.
Although she is nearly ninety years old, in order to solve the problem of artemisinin "drug resistance", Tu Youyou is still overcoming difficulties in the field of antimalarial. In June 2019, Tu Youyou's research team made new breakthroughs in artemisinin's "antimalarial mechanism research", "causes of drug resistance" and "adjustment of treatment methods", and proposed a practical treatment plan to deal with the problem of "artemisinin resistance".
Pedro Alonso, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Programme, said: "To date, artemisinin combination therapies have cured billions of cases of malaria. The antimalarial scientific research work carried out by Tu Youyou's team is outstanding and the contribution is immeasurable. ”
Kunming Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. developed and produced artemisinin series of antimalarial drugs artemether.
The China model – written into the global technical guidelines for malaria elimination
In the malaria elimination action, China has formulated the work strategy of "clue tracing, inventory and extraction", summarized the "1-3-7" work model, established a five-level malaria laboratory testing network at the national, provincial, municipal, county and township levels, strengthened the diagnostic and quality control capabilities of national and provincial reference laboratories, improved the malaria vector surveillance and malaria parasite resistance monitoring system, and built a "3+1 defense line" for malaria elimination in border areas.
Among them, the "1-3-7" work model requires that the case be diagnosed and reported within "1" day of the discovery of the patient, the case review and case epidemiological investigation be completed within "3" days, and the investigation and disposal of the epidemic site where the case is located within "7" days can cut off the transmission of the source of infection.
The "1-3-7" work model not only enabled China to achieve very effective results in malaria elimination, but also was highly recognized by WHO, and was officially written into the global technical guidelines for malaria elimination as a global malaria elimination work model and promoted to the world.
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 relentlessly exploring, achieving practical results and having 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. ”
(Public Network, Poster News Editor Ge Siqi Synthesized from Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily, CCTV, Health News, etc.)