The New Malaria Vaccine

 For many years, researchers and scientist have tried to tackle the life threatening disease, Malaria. Of recent, a vaccine was approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO), providing hope for many. Malaria is a disease that is caused by parasites and is passed on to individuals through the bites of infected female anopheles mosquitoes. In 2019, there was 230 million cases and 409,000 deaths that mostly occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Although Malaria can be preventable and is treatable, many population groups are significantly at higher risk of contracting Malaria and developing health complications. Populations that are particularly vulnerable include those who are may have an underlying health conditions such as HIV/AIDS, children who are 5 and under, pregnant women and those who tend to travel. Due to the major global burden, many scientists have been working for decades to create a vaccine.

The WHO has approved the first vaccine for malaria called RTS,S and have set a goal for the new vaccine to achieve 70% protection from the disease. However RTS,S is currently only exhibiting 30-40% efficacy. Due to these disappointing statistics, questions have been thrown to organisations: is the vaccine worth using? Are health organisations going to deploy this vaccine?

Unfortunately, the financial burden of creating and distributing the vaccine is also large, and so the current focus is to give the vaccine in places of high disease burden, where there is a higher rate of deaths or severe illness. It has been mentioned that a further investment will need to be done to ensure that the vaccine is accessible to countries that will be in need. Nevertheless, the vaccine has great potential and public and global health organisations such as the WHO have a huge interest in developing vaccines that will be effective but also save millions of lives from Malaria. For researchers and scientists, this is just the beginning and we are hopeful that this is something that will change lives forever.