Health tip: Why you shouldn’t play with ACT

Artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) has become the last present defence against malaria, a disease striking, at least, 100 million times each year in Nigeria. But the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has warned on the indiscriminate consumption of ACTs for every fever that might not be malaria, insisting it wastes ACTs and risks opening chances […]

Artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) has become the last present defence against malaria, a disease striking, at least, 100 million times each year in Nigeria.
But the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has warned on the indiscriminate consumption of ACTs for every fever that might not be malaria, insisting it wastes ACTs and risks opening chances for the parasite to become resistant.
 “The repeated waste of ÀCTs will make us drug resistant,” said Dr Nnamdi Nwaneri of NMEP. “And we will have nothing. When chloroquine was phased out, we had ACTs waiting.”
 The risk is that ACT is falling under the consequences of substandard, spurious, fake, falsely-labelled and counterfeit medicines, making medicines fail or cause deaths, according to Cheryl Lettenmaier, of the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative, HC3.
 The NMEP and HC3 have listed six ways individuals can help keep ACTs from falling out of use:
·       Get tested for malaria at a health facility before taking malaria medicines.
·       Treat malaria only with ACTs. They combine two different drugs  –  one short-acting one that kills the parasite and a long-acting second that stays on to destroy parasites that escape the first  –  in a single tablet.
·      Purchase ACTs from health facilities, pharmacists or licensed chemists.
·      Check every ACT pack for the NAFDAC number, expiry date and scratchpad, which contains a code you can send via SMS to verify authenticity.
·       Use the scratchpad before buying ACT to ensure the drug is genuine.
·       Report poor quality medication to NAFDAC and encourage others to report too.