May& Baker Nigeria Plc, a pharmaceutical manufacturer has introduced Malact, a new antimalarial medicine that promises to revolutionize malaria disease treatment in the country.
The new drug, named Malact is a Dihydroarteminsin-piperaquine combination-based formulation which ensures fast relief from malaria and guarantees better post treatment protection. With increasing resistance to older drugs, the World Health Organisation (WHO) years back jettisoned Chloroquine and recommended Artermisinin based Combination Therapies (ACTS) as first line drug for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria.
However, most ACTS have since then shown limitations including resistance to treatment. But Dihydroarteminsin-piperaquine combination, the newer artemisinin-based combination therapy has shown excellent efficacy in multiple trials and is considered the most promising drug currently available for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria.
Read also: Bangladesh’s U-turn on coal power warns Nigeria again about oil’s future
The combination has a reliable efficacy which guarantees patient faster relief compared to other ACTS currently available in the market. It also has better post treatment protection because of the Piperaquine content that makes it possible for patients not to experience relapse for at least six weeks.
Malact, the new product from May&baker, therefore prevents malaria for up to six weeks and prevents recrudescence of malaria. Other advantages of Malact include convenient dosing because it is taken once a day and this reduces the chances of dosage non-compliance. It does not require to be taken with fatty meals by the patient before it can be absorbed.
Nnamdi Okafor, MD/CEO of May&baker said the introduction of Malact is part of the company’s efforts at continually confronting the malarial scourge by providing effective and affordable medicines for treatment of the disease.
