CRI听力:African Officials Applaud Chinese Pharmacologist's Winning Nobel Prize for Medicine

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, Regional Director of the World Health Organization's Africa Region, says Tu Youyou's development of a treatment for malaria has been a life-saver.

"As you know Malaria is one of the biggest killers of African people, particularly African children. As we were discussing the Millennium Goals last week in New York at the UN general assembly, it was acknowledged that African countries have made tremendous progress in reducing child deaths, especially in the last ten years. And it's my belief that this discovery and the access to this treatment made a huge contribution to reducing the deaths of African children and also pregnant mothers."

Inspired by Chinese traditional medicine, pharmacologist Tu Youyou and her team discovered an anti-malarial agent in the plant Artemisia annua back in the 1960s.

Her research eventually led to the isolation of artemisinin, or Qinghaosu in Chinese, which is now used widely as an anti-malaria drug.

The fourth generation of the drug, which was developed by the Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, was in the small island-nation of Comoros in 2007.

In just three months, the drug lowered the rate of malaria infections by 98.7 percent.

Professor Song Jianping with the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine says the drug has revolutionized malaria treatment.

"We want to help Africa find a quick solution to eradicate Malaria, and not just just a cure for the disease. If you treat one patient without removing the source of the infection, the treatment is not effective. So we have made adjustments to the treatment: from individual treatment to mass prevention, from killing asexual plasmodium parasite to killing both the asexual and sexual parasites."

Comoros vice-President Fouad Mohadji says he knows first-hand how well the Chinese-produced treatment can work.

"Three members of my family had malaria. Every month people get hospitalized for malaria and it will cost at least 60 euros a month. Since 2007, our country started an anti-malarial program using artemisinin and the prevalence rate has dropped significantly. The program cut hospitalization rate for every household member from 42 percent to zero. This is a great achievement in public health as well as social development."

Malaria is still a major public health problem.

It's estimated some 430-thousand people around the world die every year from the mosquito-borne virus.

90-percent of those deaths occur in Africa.

However, Chinese researchers are hoping the development of drugs through Tu Youyou's research will eventually bring that number to zero.

For CRI, I'm Luo Wen.