The World Health Organization has stated, tThe first-ever vaccine against malaria will be tested across three African nations next year. It is believed that the vaccine could help save tens of thousands of lives by preventing children from incurring the disease, which kills an estimated 429,000 people every year throughout the world.
The first set of countries selected for the pilot project to get the RTS,S vaccine will be Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi which will include over 750,000 children aged between five and 17 months old. While the vaccine has achieved some breakthrough in tightly controlled laboratory experiments, researchers are uncertain whether this will translate into effective control in the real world, which is why they are only running the pilot project in three countries.
This is mainly because the vaccine needs an exhaustive treatment program. Those who receive it needs to be administered one shot of dose every month for three months and then a fourth dose 18 months later. It is imperative that the patient receives all four doses, as the effectiveness of the vaccine drops off significantly if the last one is not given. It is for these reasons that doctors are doubtful of the usefulness of such a vaccine in some of the poorest nations on Earth.
If the vaccine is delivered, and the full treatment completed, it has been found to keep check up to four in 10 cases of the disease. This might not sound like much, but the WHO figure that this could translate into saving tens of thousands of lives.
Its real power, however, could be when it is coupled with other preventative measures, such as mosquito nets for beds. This is added reason why Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi have been preferred for the beginning pilot, as these nations already have other extensive preventative programs in place, while at the same time still having a high strain of the disease present.
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