Update: Score for Shoklo22 December 2006 |
Christmas 2006, and a special celebration is underway in a remote region of Thailand on its border with Myanmar. Researchers and doctors from all over the world (and Wellcome Trust staff) have converged in and around Mae Sot for a very special occasion: the 20th anniversary of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit.
The Shoklo research site was originally nestled far into the jungle alongside the Moei River and was first founded by François Nosten as an MSF (Médecins sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders) relief camp for the Karen refugees displaced from the Myanmar mountains. In 1986, the camp transformed into the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), part of the Wellcome Trust's South-east Asia Major Overseas Programme, with many Karen people working as staff members. SMRU is now based in the town of Mae Sot.
With Professor Nosten (a former Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow) leading an extensive research programme, the Unit has conducted an extensive range of clinical trials on antimalarial therapies, influencing malaria treatment not just in Thailand but across South-east Asia and even wider. The origins of World Health Organization support for artemisinin combination therapy – using an artemisinin derivative in combination with a partner drug, thereby speeding up recovery and reducing the risk of resistance – can be traced back to work carried out at Mae Sot.
Celebrating both the benefits gained by local people and advances in treatment and care does not mean the Unit is resting on its laurels, however. It is continuing drug treatment trials, particularly for malaria in pregnancy; it has begun an AIDS awareness programme; and it has started looking at respiratory infections and has set up an avian flu surveillance programme.