It's not pretty.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease... ((causes)) symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases progressing to coma or death.
In fact it's downright deadly.
Each year, there are more than 225 million cases of malaria, killing around 781,000 people each year according to the World Health Organization's 2010 World Malaria Report, 2.23% of deaths worldwide. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of deaths being young children.
But now, as CNN reports, there is hope:
A malaria vaccine has eluded scientists for decades, but preliminary results from a phase 3 clinical trial in Africa are providing hope.
The data suggest that the vaccine, known as RTS,S, cuts the number of malaria cases in half...
The preliminary results, which were announced at a malaria forum hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, covered 6,000 of the participating children, all aged between 5 and 17 months.
The developers, GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, said it showed roughly a 50% reduction in malaria cases in a 12-month period following vaccination.
Fifty percent is nothing like eradication, but it's a hell of a lot better than zero percent...
While a 50% cut in prevalence would not be a silver bullet against malaria, it would be a significant milestone with the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young lives.
And it might be a necessary step towards an even more effective vaccine. I don't know if there's some angle the CNN reporter is missing, but this note about the company seems heartening:
Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, says that if RTS,S is approved, his company does not intend to make a profit from it. He says that GlaxoSmithKline will provide the vaccine at 5% above the cost of production and that the excess amount will be reinvested for research into the next malaria vaccine.
Truly getting rid of the scourge of malaria would be an incredible boon for sub-Saharan Africa (pdf), where poverty is now worse than anywhere else on the globe:
... "[a]s a general rule of thumb, where malaria prospers most, human societies have prospered least." The extent of the correlation suggests that malaria and poverty are intimately related.
A number of diseases have all-but disappeared in our lifetimes or our parents' lifetimes. Let's hope that malaria will be added to that list soon.
Tue Oct 18, 2011 at 10:26 PM PT: NY Times article on the vaccine