Malarial Drug

New Hope Seen In “Wonder”

A new drug, which may repre sent a major advance in the

world fight against malaria, is

soon to be given a field trial in New Guinea.

STATING this in Port Moresby in January the P-NG Director of Public Health, Dr. R. F. R. Scragg, said the trial would be conducted on Tolokiwa Island, 50 miles off the western tip of New Britain.

The Department of Public Health would conduct the trial in association with the American company which had developed the drug. The drug, known as C. I. 501, was administered by injection, and was designed to give protection against malaria for about a year. Present anti-malarials taken orally gave protection only for about a week.

Dr. Scragg said that one of the main objects of the field trial in the Territory was to determine exactly the length of protection given. The Tolokiwa trial would be one of four conducted throughout the world, and would begin in March.

The Health Department’s Research Medical Officer for Malaria, Dr. K.

Reichmann, who would be in charge

of the trial, had been to the United States recently to discuss the trial with the company.

Dr. Scragg compared the probable importance of C. I. 501 with that of penicillin.

He said the introduction of the drug to Papua and New Guinea might mean that the present system of spray ing against malaria-carrying mos quitoes could be abandoned. Wide spread use of the drug could virtu ally eliminate malaria among the people so there would be none to be transmitted by mosquitoes.

The present widespread malarial eradication campaign in the Terri tory, using spraying and mass drug administration, started in 1961 after

four years’ preliminary work. The senior Malariology Specialist, Dr. J.

J. Saave, said in January that at the end of June, 1963, a total of 386,000 people had been protected from malaria by these methods, or one of every six persons in the Territory.

At present, various stages of anti malarial protection had been estab lished for the people of the Milne Bay, New Guinea Islands region, also parts of the Sepik and the Eastern and Western Highlands.

On Kiriwina Island, in the Milne Bay District, where malaria eradica tion started in January, 1962, with spraying and mass drug administra tion, there had been no cases of malaria since May, 1963.