China adopts "malaria diplomacy" as part of Africa push

By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - In a laboratory in China's southern city of Guangzhou, scientists are trying to enhance the rare sweet wormwood shrub, from which artemisinin -- the best drug to fight malaria -- is derived.

China hopes to improve and use the drug as a uniquely Chinese weapon to fight malaria not on its own soil, where the deadly disease has been sharply pruned back, but in Africa, where it still kills one child every 30 seconds.

Already, a Chinese-backed eradication programme on a small island off Africa has proven a huge success.

Away from its practical application, scientists back in the lab in Guangzhou are also achieving results. In one of the lab's refrigerators sit a dozen triangular test-tubes holding seedlings of the sweet wormwood shrub, also called Artemisia annua, which has only been found in the wild in China, Vietnam and border areas in Myanmar.

"There are about 0.6 parts of artemisinin in every 100 parts of the plant in the wild, but we have managed to increase the artemisinin content to between 1.2 and 1.8," said Feng Liling, assistant professor at the Tropical Medicine Institute in Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

China pledged to help Africa fight malaria at the triennial Forum on China and Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2006 and has since set up 30 anti-malaria and prevention units. The next FOCAC meeting is in Egypt on November 8-9.

Helping developing countries eradicate malaria will help China project its influence and prestige as a global power, said politics professor Joseph Cheng at City University in Hong Kong.

"China is exploring cost effective ways to help the Third World and is interested in making distinct contributions," Cheng said, adding that Western interest was often lacking in a disease that seldom afflicts rich country citizens.