Beijing.– If it wasn't for the fresh, sharp scent, you could easily mistake Sweet Wormwood for any other kind of shrub.

But this shrub, also called the Artemisia annua, is widely regarded by medical experts as the best cure for malaria, one of the world's leading killer diseases.

It was here in Luofushan in China's southern Guangdong province that the shrub with fern-like leaves first found its way into Chinese medical annals more than 1,600 years ago.

No one knows how the Chinese discovered the shrub's life-saving properties, but it was doctor Ge Hong (283-363 AD) who first wrote about it in his Book of Emergency Medicine when he served as a Taoist priest in this mountainous region.

"Taoist priests were obsessed with the idea of elixirs. Ge Hong never found any elixir, but he discovered many herbal drugs, and he was the first to record the properties of artemisinin," said Zhang Shaoping of Guangdong New South Group Co. Ltd., which produces artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs).

Artemisinin is the malaria-fighting compound extracted from the shrub and is used to treat the disease, which causes fever, vomiting, body aches, diarrhea, anemia, loss of concentration, delirium, convulsions, coma and eventually, death.

Children and pregnant women deteriorate especially rapidly because of their weak immune systems, and the very young can die within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms if they are not treated.

The World Health Organization recommends that artemisinin be used in combination with other drugs, or artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), to slow the development of any resistance.

There has been no let-up in the search for an efficacious anti-malaria drug with minimal side effects.

The disease kills more than 1 million people each year, or one person every 30 seconds, and makes 300-500 million ill.

Ninety percent of the deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

The WHO describes malaria and HIV/AIDS as two of the most devastating health problems of our time, accounting for 4 million deaths a year.