New malaria drug to treat babies and young children receives approval

Pharmaceutical company Novartis said it has received approval for what it claims is the world's first drug to treat malaria in babies and young children.

The drug, known as Coartem Baby, has been approved by Swissmedic, Switzerland's regulatory body for medicine, and is expected to be approved quickly by the eight African countries that took part in the assessment, Reuters reported.

There had previously been no approved malaria treatment for infants weighing under 4.5kg, which left a treatment gap, Novartis said. There are about 30 million babies born each year in areas of Africa that are high risk for malaria, Novartis quoted one survey as saying.

The survey said the infection rate was as high as 18 per cent among infants younger than six months old in certain areas. The new drug is dissolvable and has a sweet cherry flavour to make it easier to administer to children.

Malaria kills more than 400,000 people each year, including more than 260,000 aged under five in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organisation said. The disease is caused by a single-cell parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and is transmitted to people by infected mosquitoes.

When an infected mosquito injects a person with anticoagulant saliva, to stop their blood from clotting, a form of the parasite known as a sporozoite is transmitted into the bloodstream. Sporozoites travel to the liver, where they multiply, before entering red blood cells and replicating further, releasing another form of the parasite. Disease symptoms are caused by the parasite’s effects on these red blood cells.

Mosquitoes are infected with Plasmodium falciparum when they feed on the blood of infected people, and the cycle continues.