KHARTOUM, April 25 (Xinhua) -- The drug Artemisinin is used as the first-line treatment for malaria in Sudan, an African country where the acute infectious disease is endemic, according to Sudan's medical specialists.

       "Artemisinin is a chemical compound isolated from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), an annual herb native to China" and other temperate Asian countries, Ahmed Abdalla Khidir, a pharmacist and owner of El Nadi pharmacies group in Sudan's capital Khartoum, told Xinhua on Monday.

       In Sudan, artemisinin has proved to be very efficient in treating malaria, he noted.

       Since its discovery by Chinese scientists in the 1970s, artemisinin has been used as a foundation for antimalarial drug development. In 2015, Tu Youyou, who led the research project, became the first Chinese national to receive a Nobel prize in natural sciences.

       Chinese medical practitioners have long been using the extracts of the herb as a remedy to many diseases, either in the form of oral medication or oil suspension for injections, according to Khidir.

       Khidir added that artemisinin has been produced locally in Sudan by local pharma firm Amipharma Laboritaries and the joint venture Shanghai-Sudan Pharmaceutical.

       Al-Wathiq Mohamed Ahmed, a Sudanese pharmacologist, told Xinhua that China-developed artemisinin drugs have outrun their foreign counterparts in terms of quality and affordability.

       Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT), recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a front-line treatment for uncomplicated malaria and chloroquine-resistant malaria, have saved millions of lives across the world in the past two decades.

       According to WHO statistics, "more than 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from artemisinin treatment, and about 1.5 million patients have escaped death thanks to this treatment," Ahmed said.

       The World malaria report 2021 issued by WHO stated that in 2020, Sudan carried the heaviest malaria burden in the region, accounting for 56 percent of cases and 61 percent of malaria deaths, followed by Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Djibouti.