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''Madagascar: producing the active ingredient for the world's only WHO approved malaria drug''
'''Malaria kills more than 400,000 people every year. 90% of these people live in Africa and by far the most of them are children under the age of five. According to UNICEF , malaria accounts for about one in six of all childhood deaths in Africa.'''
In 1971, after reviewing 2000 2,000 candidate recipes, ancient texts, and folk remedies, the Chinese pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou discovered the Malaria curing power of a plant called named ''[[Artemisia annua]]''. It took till until 2004 for her invention to be translated into enter the market entry of as an approved medicine. For her discovery, Tu received the Nobel Prize in 2015for her discovery. Today, the so-called Artemisinin Combined Therapies (ACTs) are the only malaria curing medicines that are approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Other medicines exist, but have lost their effectiveness as the virus has developed a resistance against them. The only African country which produces ''Artemisia annua'' at a large scale is Madagascar. This is directly linked to the activities of Bionexx. ''Artemisia annua'' is typically grown by smallholder farmers. Due to its specific growing and harvesting conditions, it can be cultivated in the low season as a counter-crop of rice.
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For the farmers, this ''Artemisia annua'' offers a new and interesting type of cash crop is an interesting enhancement of their income per hectare. In MadagascarAround 10, around 10.000 farmers are supplying to supply Bionexx in Madagascar and derive about 25% from of their annual cash revenue from thisgrowing ''Artemisia annua''.
=== Bionexx Madagascar ===
* is a semi-pharmaceutical company active in the identification, development and production of functional ingredients derived from plants, for use in the pharmaceutical, food and personal care industries.
* had a $ 6.8 million turnover in 2016, of which 80% comes from Artemisinin.
* has successfully passed the most stringent quality audits of various pharma companies;
* is now one of the leading Artemisinin suppliers globally, and the only based in Africa;
* has installed capacity to strongly increase Artemisinin volume in the coming years.
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