Seems like every time we turn around malaria is in the news again. Between linking malaria medication with treating separate illnesses and slowing some diseases, to being closer and closer to curing malaria, the time is now and malaria is showing its face all over the international news. Now we will just need to find a way to get this possible cure to the grief stricken countries where whole cities are under the attack of malaria infested mosquitoes. Malaria thrives in mosquitoes in countries and places closet to the equator. It’s sad that most of the countries along the equator are not only poor but they are among the most susceptible to getting and dying from malaria if gone untreated.
Malaria: What it is
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by the bites of certain mosquitoes. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that include severe fever and headache, dehydration, vomiting, diarrhea and in severe cases progressing to coma or death. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In common English, it is one nasty bug bite that you would be lucky to survive without medical care. The most common to die from this disease are children, malnourished individuals, the sick, and the elderly. Unfortunately most people in these parts of the world fall into one of these categories. Malaria kills 800,000 people a year and affects 225 million people every year.
Breaking News
After more than 30 years of futile attempts to find a cure for malaria, researchers are
finally getting closer. The experimental vaccine, still fairly early in the testing phase, protects about 50% of children who receive it, but even that could “potentially translate into tens of millions of cases of malaria in children averted annually,” says Tsiri Agbenyega, the principal investigator for the vaccine trials at Agogo Presbyterian Hospital in Agogo, Ghana. “This is remarkable when you consider there has never been a successful vaccine against a human parasite nor against malaria.” In Africa, one in five children die from malaria, one every 30 seconds, the World Health Organization says.
The vaccine is being produced in Europe and will go through licensing there for production and use in Africa, says Mary Hamel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It will then need to undergo market authorization for each African country. They hope to have it released in Africa as early as 2015. GlaxoSmithKline says it expects the initial production capacity to be about 30 million doses, enough for 10 million children a year. It hopes to scale up manufacturing capability in both Europe and later in Africa and perhaps India, to lower costs. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we are on our way to helping some of the sickest people in the world.
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