Quinine, which is isolated from the bark of a cinchona tree may be used to treat malaria but World Health Organization (WHO) does not recommend it because of its side effects. Artemisinin has been recommended instead. A Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist, Tu Youyou 屠呦呦 had been credited with its discovery. It seemed that in 1967, during the Vietnam War, President Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for help in finding an alternative for treating malaria. His soldiers had contracted a form of malaria which is resistant to chloroquine. Tu Youyou probably came into the picture next. Her discovery was a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine. Millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America were saved. She most certainly deserved to receive the Nobel Prize for medicine which she did in 2015.
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