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Front line against malaria

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Updated: 2013-09-06 11:56

By Xu Jingxi ( China Daily)


Hailed as a hero on the islands of Comoros for his work in battling malaria, Li Guoqiao has  dedicated his life to fighting the killer disease, even self-testing drugs and becoming intentionally infected.

  Li Guoqiao has received a presidential medal from the Union of Comoros for his work battling malaria there. Provided to China Daily
When Li Guoqiao first visited the Union of Comoros, an African nation made of three islands, in 2006, he was greeted with curious looks and doubts about the bitter Chinese medicine granules he claimed to be the antidote to the deadly malaria that had caused so much grief there.

But it was not long before Li had begun to dispel those doubts. The professor from Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine and his team launched a battle against malaria first on the island of Mohli in 2007, where 23 percent of the 36,000 residents were carriers of plasmodium. The percentage dropped to 0.33 percent four months later, setting a record as the world's fastest control of malaria, and no one has died from it since.

The Chinese medical team reproduced this success on Anjouan, an island with a population of 310,000, last year, bringing the percentage of plasmodium carriers down from 19 percent to 0.5 percent.

A group of nine young doctors flew to Comoros on August 23, ready to help 350,000 residents on Grande Comore, the country's biggest island, to defeat malaria.

Seventy-seven-year-old Li has been on the front line of combating malaria at home and abroad for 46 years, but is unable to join this latest trip due to health concerns.

Having been bustling between labs, academic conferences and hyper-endemic areas of malaria around the globe, Li suffered a cerebral infarction during a flight to Comoros in 2008. He survived on infusions in a local hospital for six days and was then sent back to Guangzhou for better treatment.

After recovering from the illness, he continued with his work at full pace, returning to Comoros each year until he suffered three strokes in 2011.

"The 20-hour flight to Comoros is too much for my health. And my family also firmly prohibits me from taking long-distance trips. But I can still go to countries nearby such as Cambodia to offer medical aid and carry on my scientific research," Li says with a grin.

"My Chinese dream is that our anti-malarial drug and therapy can win the world's recognition and wipe out the disease one day."

To thank the Chinese medical team for their persistent, selfless aid, Fouad Mohadji, the vice-president of Comoros, visited Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine in person on Aug 21 to award presidential medals to Li and his colleague Song Jianping, the first two foreigners to be given the award.

Having left his wife and newly-born daughter to travel to hyper-endemic areas in Hainan and Yunnan, Li not only sacrificed his family life but was also prepared to sacrifice his health in the pursuit of eradicating malaria, often asking colleagues to jab him with needles in an effort to find an acupuncture cure. After one such test in 1968 he lost sensitivity to heat in his right leg for a year.

After coming to the realization that acupuncture was not a good therapy for malaria, Li sought a cure through drugs, which he also tested on himself. In 1973, after one test of a folk recipe, Li was left temporarily paralyzed.

In 1981 Li risked his life, injecting the blood of a patient with malaria into himself to see how it progresses first hand. Suffering fever and enlargement of the liver and spleen, Li wrote a will in case he died. Jokingly he asked his friends and family to draw a plasmodium on his funeral wreaths.

Li's dedication eventually paid off with the discovery of artemisinin for tackling malaria, on which he co-wrote a paper that was published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, putting his methods into the international spotlight.

Li's dedication to fighting malaria came after witnessing an emaciated mother and daughter in a malaria-stricken village in Yunnan in the 1970s. His eyes still tear up when he talks about the experience.

"I'm gratified that I've found young successors who are also enthusiastic and dedicated," says Li.

The main body of his medical team traveling to Africa and Southeast Asia are now people in their 20s and 30s.

Deng Changsheng, 32, was the leader of the nine-member team that flew to Comoros recently. The days he has spent on scientific research and medical aid in the African country and Cambodia add up to 50 months since 2006.

"Honestly, I joined professor Li's anti-malarial programs with the purpose of accomplishing my studies on the subject," Deng says. "I had never expected myself to stay in Africa for so long. But after seeing how terrible malaria is and saving hundreds of lives at the front line, my heart has been taken by the sense of mission to defeat the deadly disease.

"Now I've found the direction for my career. The success in Comoros is built on the work of generations and it's time for us to take the baton."

xujingxi@chinadaily.com.cn

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