taking the string out of malaria

This is an old news artical from last year, July 29, 2010

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/in-the-black/taking-the-string-out-of-malaria/story-e6frfinf-1225898434376


Thought you guys might like to read it if you have not already. Cheers.
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Taking the string out of malaria

CALVIN Ross still remembers the first time he saw Rwandan children very sick with malaria respond quickly to a simple medical spray under the tongue.
"It is very exciting when you see something you have worked on for such a long time work so well."

By the end of the trial, the result surprised even Calvin, with six doses of the simple Artimist spray working much faster and more successfully than 21 doses of intravenous quinine.

Later this year a phase-three trial on 150 children in Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda is the final hurdle that should see ASX-listed Eastland Medical Systems find a large pharmaceutical partner and progress to commercial availability of Artimist.

The demand for a robust and easy malaria treatment has never been higher with 500 million cases a year - 200 million of them among children.


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Most malaria deaths happen among poor African children under the age of five with one dying every 30 seconds, largely due to delays in receiving an effective treatment.

It is this market that Artimist is aimed at because it has significant advantages over tablets which are hard to administer to very sick children. Intravenous treatments are often expensive and administered in crowded hospital beds days away from remote villages.

Calvin said malaria tablets needed to be kept cool, which is difficult in Africa, and they are also much more difficult for a sick child's body to absorb compared to the spray.

And because Artimist is a new delivery device of an established medicine, its effects have already been widely studied and documented.

"As an interim rescue medicine with a two-year shelf life that can survive high temperatures, we are very confident this will be a life saver," said Calvin, a drug delivery expert and Eastland director.

The health economics of the new treatment method also stack up strongly, given the reduction in the use of scarce hospital beds and lost time and productivity when parents take a child to hospital.

Eastland Medical Systems shares rose 6.3 per cent, or 0.3, to 5