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info on buying malarials in Laos
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| buying anti-malarials in malaysia (not for malaysia) ... By christay2009 on 18 Oct 2009 | 8 | 2894 | 30 Oct 2009 |
Indoluso
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in The Times online : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article476346.ece
about local population, Laos:
"“(...) continuous use of drugs which were effective 50 years ago but now don’t work.”"
"On the shelves of Savannakhet’s main pharmaceutical wholesaler three types of malaria drugs are available. All are chloroquine-based" - "For decades the anti-malarial chloroquine was hailed as a wonder medicine in the Third World. It saved millions of lives but, as parasites became resistant to it, its effectiveness waned dramatically."
"In Thailand, just a 15-minute boat ride across the Mekong River, anyone suffering from malaria can get the new generation of therapy in local hospitals"
#1 Posted: 7/6/2010 - 19:24
somsai
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Your article is six years old.
And it was written about one of the few places that still had much malaria.
The WHO has pretty good statistics that are often a year or so old, and the Lao govt has breakdowns by province. Their goal these days is extremly accurate diagnosis and data on those cases they can find. Chloroquine has been very effective and it's cheap and widely available. Everyone now knows malaria is cheaply treatable.
Look at the graphs
http://www.theglobalfund.org/documents/regionalmeetings/mongolia2009/D3/Malaria/Lao%20PDR%20-%20Malaria%20Control%20in%20Lao%20PDR%20-%205%20September%202009.ppt
#2 Posted: 8/6/2010 - 11:05
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Indoluso
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Hi,
I must say that only after posting I got that 2004 was 6 years ago... time flies! Anyway I just wanted to post this as a "warning" for people to be careful if buying malarials in Laos as they could be sold Chloroquine which apparently doesn't work anymore. Actually I know nothing about malarials so if you say chloroquine works I beleive you and maybe this article had some kind of pharmaceutical lobby presure as to impose another medicin than chloroquine.
When writing the post at first I had included more on Lao people, but I figured that my goal wasn't to judge local people and government, just to make tourists aware that medicins bought locally might be "out of date"(even though "Travelfish" already warns that buying medicins in SE Asia might be tricky). Thus I deleted certain sentences but unfortunatly I forgot to take "about local population, Laos: " from the post. But as you can see I only kept sentences which would serve my point, make tourists aware .
Cheers!
#3 Posted: 8/6/2010 - 13:50
wanderingcat
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think the current + greater danger to both locals & tourists in Laos (& also Cambodia & Vietnam) is the sale of fake anti-malarial drugs - stuff that contains anything from zero to too-little-to-be-effective amounts of active ingredient. so even if one can find the 'latest' antimalarial drugs on pharmacy shelves it might not be the real thing.
#4 Posted: 8/6/2010 - 18:59
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Laos transport timetables