A groundbreaking malaria treatment has been approved by Swiss medical authorities, marking a significant step forward in the global fight against the disease. The new treatment, Coartem, is specifically designed for newborn babies and children weighing between 4.4 and 11 pounds.
Malaria remains a serious global health threat, with 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths worldwide in 2023. Children under 5 are particularly vulnerable, accounting for about 76% of all malaria deaths in the WHO’s Africa region.
The development of Coartem addresses a critical treatment gap for young infants suffering from malaria. The treatment contains a combination of antimalarial drugs artemether and lumefantrine, which is already approved for use in patients weighing more than 11 pounds. However, there was no previously approved treatment for babies weighing less than this.
The new treatment has several advantages, including being dissolvable in breast milk and having a sweet cherry flavor to make it easier to administer. It has been authorized in collaboration with national regulatory authorities in eight African countries, including Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Experts say the new treatment is a welcome development for both very young babies and malnourished children who don’t come under normal treatment guidance. Bhargavi Rao, co-director of the Malaria Center at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, praised the treatment as “a drug that can be mixed with breast milk, which is brilliant and much easier to deliver.”
Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said his company has worked to fight malaria for three decades and is proud to have developed the first clinically proven malaria treatment for newborns and young babies. The treatment will be introduced on a largely nonprofit basis in areas where malaria is endemic.
The approval of Coartem marks an important milestone in the global fight against malaria, which affects nearly 5 billion people worldwide and claims over 600,000 lives annually.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/07/08/malaria-coartem-drug-babies-novartis