A malaria crisis looms

LEAD PIC: A woman getting a blood test for malaria at the clinic of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit in Wang Pha, a Thai village on the border with Myanmar. -- Photos: NIRMAL GHOSH/Straits Times

DR Aung Pyae Phyo drives his old car at breakneck speed from Mae Sot up the winding road between gently undulating bean and sugar cane fields, now mostly harvested and bare, to the village of Wang Pha, where the Moei River, narrow and deep, marks the Thai-Myanmar border.

The 39-year-old Myanmar national, who studied medicine at Rangoon University, is now working at the Mae Sot-based Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) and doing his PhD on drug-resistant malaria. SMRU is a field station of the Faculty of Tropical Medicine of Mahidol University in Bangkok, and is part of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (Moru) supported by theBritain-based Wellcome Trust.