Africa, the usually forgotten continent, is again front and centre in the world's conscience, thanks to an unlikely alliance of well-meaning pop stars and rich-world politicians. Not even the terrorist bombings in London could distract the G8 summit from its core agenda: a pledge to increase annual aid to the continent from US$25 billion to US$50 billion by 2010.
But such high-profile efforts - including the 'Global 8' series of rock concerts that preceded the summit - overshadow smaller miracles that, too, have the potential to work wonders in Africa. These often occur far from the international limelight, in unlikely places such as China's Yunnan province.
There, Kunming Pharmaceuticals Corp extracts artemisinin from the dried leaves of sweet wormwood, which grows wild in southwest China. From artemisinin, a substance Chinese medical practitioners have used for centuries to relieve fevers, the company derives more potent artemether and supplies it to manufacturers such as Novartis, the Swiss-based pharmaceutical group, for use in a new anti-malarial treatment.
What sets this drug apart from others used against malaria is not just its ability to kill the parasite that causes the disease extremely quickly. Chinese scientists have also found that when artemether is used in combination with slower acting drugs, the parasite is unable to build up resistance to them.
The benefits of an effective malaria remedy are hard to exaggerate. The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 350 Africans a day and strikes down countless others with unbearable fevers that prevent them from working, providing for their families and attending school.
Resistance is the bane of anti-malarial efforts. Having been exposed to treatments such as chloroquine for years, in many regions the malaria parasite is now immune to them.
