In just this past week, it has been announced that the first ever malaria vaccine is successful against clinical and severe malaria in five to 17 month olds in sub-Saharan Africa through major trials. This vaccine, which has been in development for 24 years, has shown to halve the risk of infection in a study in Africa. Through the success of the study, it becomes more likely that there will be a version available to the world by 2015.
One of the major barriers of making a vaccine effective, cost, will be minimized as well. The cost of the vaccine will only be the cost of manufacturing and an additional 5% to go back into tropical disease research, so the company is not expecting to make any money from this project. The altruism of this company provides a positive outlook towards pharmaceutical companies, who normally get a bad reputation for marking up vaccines and medication. Unfortunately, even with the barrier of cost eliminated, accessibility will still hold as a barrier and will be more difficult to minimize.
However, once the vaccine is put into use worldwide, the risks of getting malaria will be greatly minimized. Because mosquito bites are inevitable, malaria is one of the most difficult diseases to prevent. Although there have been uses of pesticides, mosquito nets, and other methods of prevention, the use of a vaccine is undoubtedly the most effective method.
There are about 300-500 million cases of malaria each year, and 1 million annual deaths due to malaria, making malaria a high incidence disease, and thus a target towards goal 6 of the Millennium Development Goals. With the development of the malaria vaccine, we are finally going in the right direction towards reaching this goal.
The article can be found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/malaria-vaccine-gsk-idUSL5E7LI4O020111018
All the people who living in developing countries want effective and safe malaria vaccine and this article give hope to poor people. Especially all Africa needs is more children surviving to breeding age. This trial looks to promising. We sure hope they’ll improve on it and get the percentages higher. Malaria is endemic in more than 100 countries worldwide and killed around 781,000 people in 2009, according to the World Health Organization. Most deaths in India are of children under the age of five. This will be a very helpful vaccine against malaria has been shown to reduce African children’s risk of acquiring the disease by about half. At least prove that it prevent children from disease and have better healthy life.
ReplyDeleteThe discovery of the malaria vaccination is a huge step in eradicating the high incidence rates in developing regions such as Africa. It is true that creating easy access to this vaccination will be a challenge for health providers and organizations. Once the treatment reaches the populations, the next hurdle will be ensuring herd immunization is created. With preventative ways in use, such as mosquito nets, the vaccination will be a more effective solution to fighting the fatal disease. The progress done thus far on the new treatment will greatly benefit those in need.
ReplyDeleteThis is a HUGE step in international health. While the vaccine is still fairly new, it will take a while to manufacture and distribute the vaccine to those who need it the most (Sub-Saharan Africans), however, once it does reach that point, malaria should in theory go the same route in history as small pox. This will save millions of lives and free up a ton of funding for other vaccinations.
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