Artequick fails ? Artemisia afra eradicates malaria !

Submitted by Pascal Gisenya and Pierre Lutgen on 12/06/2021 In 2014, the blog « Artequick programmed for failure » on www.malariaworld.org had started a heated debate. Meanwhile several mass drug administration trials have failed, the largest one performed in the Comoros by a Chinese company. This does not prevent other people to use Africans as guinea pigs for further mass drug administration trials with the same ACTs. Okebe, J., Dabira, E., Jaiteh, F. Koen Peeters Grietens & Umberto D’Alessandro. Reactive, self-administered malaria treatment against asymptomatic malaria infection: results of a cluster randomized controlled trial in The Gambia. Malar J 20, 253 (2021). Quote « Systematically treating all residents of compounds where clinical malaria cases occur would clear these infections and reduce transmission. This was tested in a cluster randomized trial carried out in 50 villages in Central Gambia. In the intervention arm, dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine was administered to all residents of compounds with a clinical malaria case. At the end of the intervention, malaria prevalence was not significantly lower in the intervention than in the control arm. » Meanwhile several clinical trials in African countries with Artemisia afra, a local plant which is completely legal, have demonstrated strong prophylactic properties. Eradication also becomes a possibility because Artemisia kills all residual gametocytes liable to transmit the disease. None of the current antimalarial drugs has prophylactic properties. None completely eliminates gametocytes, except primaquine which has no therapeutic effect on Plasmodium falciparum , but inhibits gametocytes at the sexual stage (with strong side-effects for G6PD patients)