Herbs and shrubs are always known for their medicinal values, but the shrub called the Artemisia annua, is broadly regarded by medical experts as the best cure for malaria, one of the world's leading deadly diseases. Sweet Wormwood (Artemisia annua) is distinguished from other kind of shrubs by its fresh, sharp scent. This shrub with fern-like leaves first found its way into Chinese medical annals more than 1,600 years ago in Luofushan in China's southern Guangdong province. Doctor Ge Hong was the first who, wrote about it in his Book of Emergency Medicine when he served as a Taoist priest in this mountainous region.The WHO recommends that artemisinin be used in combination with other drugs, or artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), to slow the development of any resistance.Quinine, extracted from the bark of the South American cinchona tree and in use for more than 160 years, was regarded as the drug of choice up to the early 2000s, until it was displaced by artemisinin in the controversial SEAQUAMAT (Southeast Asia Quinine Artesunate Malarial Trial) of June 2003-May 2005. Doctors in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Myanmar split 2,000 patients suffering from severe malaria into two groups, giving half of them artemisinin and the other half quinine but stopped the trial because of the huge difference in mortality in the two groups.

China, home to the Artemisia annua, is now an exporter of ACTs to many malaria-afflicted countries in the world.
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