AN ORAL artemisinin-combination therapy is now one of the standard licensed treatments for uncomplicated malaria in the UK. Until recently, however, the origins of this drug were a mystery. But a recent article in New Scientist explains that it was a Chinese pharmacologist, Tu Youyou, who discovered artemisinin and its value in malaria. Professor Tu's part in this story begins in the 1960s, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, when drug resistance was developing to chloroquine, which was then the main treatment for malaria.
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