Drug-resistant malaria could spread fast, expert warns

This longer-to-treat form of malaria is suspected of breaking out along the Thai-Myanmar frontier and in a province of Vietnam, where tests are under way to confirm it, but the great fear is of it reaching Africa.

"It is a time bomb, it is ticking. It has the potential of killing millions of African children,"

"It could be a Chinese worker acting as an adviser in Cambodian forests who then hops on a plane to Africa. It could go off at any minute."

Swiss drugmaker Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis of France make the most widely-used ACTs, which treat 80 million and 45 million patients respectively a year

250 million infected by Malaria /year

1 million deaths/year

source:reuters.com

watch Multi-Resistent Malaria (yellow)

Malaria infects about 243 million people worldwide a year, causing an estimated 863,000 deaths, making it a major killer especially among African children.