The discovery of a new strain of malaria in Asia resistant to current treatments for the disease is alarming the international community and could negate the effects of a successful global campaign against the disease.

Researchers from the United Kingdom reported drug-resistant malaria has been detected along the border between India and Myanmar. They described this alarming development as an "enormous threat" to global health.

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This malaria mutation resists the effects of artemisinin, which is currently the most effective cure for the disease. Artemisinin is usually given as part of combination therapy. Its use has been the main reason why deaths from malaria were nearly halved since 2000. Malaria now kills about 584,000 people each year, most of them in Africa

Artemisinin replaced chloroquine, the former frontline therapy that hundreds of millions of lives. The malaria virus, however, evolved resistance to chloroquine with the first chloroquine resistant strain discovered in 1957 along the border between Cambodia and Thailand.

Scientists are deeply worried about the new malaria strain's ability to withstand the effects of artemisinin. This strain has been spreading since it emerged in South East Asia. Tests show this resistance on the verge of entering India, according to a study in Lancet Infectious Diseases,.

"We can see artemisinin resistance is clearly present quite close to the Indian border, that's clearly a threat and in the future is likely to lead to extension of the problem to neighboring areas", said Dr Charles Woodrow, one of the researchers from the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Thailand to the BBC.

"But beyond the short term, there is very likely to be a problem, and there are very few [other] drugs on the table."

Prof Mike Turner, the head of infection and immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust medical charity, said the new research shows that history is repeating itself " ... with parasites resistant to artemisinin drugs, the mainstay of modern malaria treatment, now widespread in Myanmar.

"We are facing the imminent threat of resistance spreading into India, with thousands of lives at risk," he said.