Global Health, China's Pride On Line in Malaria's Clash

Kunming Pharmaceutical Corp. of China makes a potent drug to fight malaria, a disease that kills more than a million people a year. Business is brisk. Yet the World Health Organization calls the sale of the drug a major threat to global health. It is demanding that Kunming and makers of similar pills desist.

It's a dispute that touches on money, national pride and the dilemmas of treating infectious diseases. The WHO says resistance is emerging to the drug, based on the natural substance artemisinin, and in most cases it should only be used in combination with other antimalarial drugs. The leading combination drug is made by Novartis AG of Switzerland.

Kunming and other Chinese drug makers say the WHO is overestimating the risk of resistance -- and underestimating the urgent need for treatments. "This medicine is in huge demand, especially from African countries," says Yu Zelin, Kunming's general director of international trade. The Chinese companies also resent being boxed out of part of a market for a drug Chinese scientists invented.