Malaria has been a scourge that has accompanied humanity for thousands of years. It has killed millions of people and stunted the growth of societies. Malaria stymied Scotland’s attempt to become an Imperial Power and was the cause of death of thousands of British Imperial administrators and soldiers across the globe during the time of the British Empire. Malaria rendered whole areas of the planet unusable for man because of the danger posed by this mosquito borne disease. In the West it was brought under control by the draining of the marshlands that are the home of the mosquito and by the very liberal application of the pesticide DDT. Unfortunately, the draining of marshland also robs us of biodiversity and DDT causes its own problems and does not break down and stays in the environment for years.
The ultimate prize for researchers into Malaria has been a Malaria vaccine but up until recently, due to the nature of the Malarial disease, such an undertaking has failed. Now however things are much different. There is now a Malaria vaccine that has been produced and approved which should make life less awful for those millions of people who live in areas that have been afflicted by Malaria.
The vaccine is not perfect, it has a 39% effectiveness. But when coupled with anti-Malarial drugs the vaccine becomes much more effective. The story of this new vaccine is told in a Spiked article and its a fascinating story.
A vaccine for Malaria will mean that children who might have died from Malaria will now live. It will mean that farmers in poor countries will no longer have to fear catching this disease when they tend their fields. It could even be the key to development of economies and societies that have been held back because of the devastation caused by this awful disease.
Finding out about a vaccine for a disease that has ravaged humanity for millennia is one of those moments when I want to say ‘Isn’t science wonderful’.
“Finding out about a vaccine for a disease that has ravaged humanity for millennia is one of those moments when I want to say ‘Isn’t science wonderful’ “. What is in it? What are the side effects? Has it passed all three of the preproduction stages? After Covid vaccines, I ask many questions but receive few answers from ‘Science’..
This vaccine has been in development for a while and all the safety issues have been gone into. In fact the release was paused for a while just to make sure that all was OK. In any event, a vaccine against Malaria is a darn sight better than contracting Malaria.
As one why remembers the horror of polio and many other such disease’s I am thankful for the wonder vaccines that science has given us. Yes nothing is perfect but the good has vastly outweighed the bad and millions of lives have been saved or wonderfully improved by science. I shall for ever be grateful that I have lived in the golden age of antibiotics for example because without them I for one would have died many years ago. Those in intensive care with Covid who didn’t believe in the vaccine might now like to reconsider that choice as their lives are saved by the sweat, hard work and dedication of others who probably did have the vaccine.
I’m a mid life parent and I’m fully in favour of vaccines. Maybe it’s because when I was in hospital when I was five the boy in the next bed to me must have been one of the last to contract wild polio in the UK and I distinctly recall him saying that one day he will have shoes by which he meant one day he might walk. That sort of thing made a big impression on me and when my son was born I made sure that he had all his vaccinations and that he got them on time. I wanted him to be vaccinated against TB as his grandparents were living in an area where there was a lot of imported TB but the GP refused on the grounds that the risk to him was very small.
Antibiotics have turned conditions that would once have killed into survivable experiences. As for the anti vaxxers I think that they’ve come to take the scientific developments for granted and believe, erroneously, that ‘natural immunity’ is better than vaccination and they forget that before vaccination and antibiotics millions of people died from diseases like Smallpox and Bubonic Plague where natural immunity just did not work.
I was nervous about the covid vaccines at first but after I dug down into the history of their development, which goes back to the mid 1970’s when the theory for the potential of mRNA vaccines was first developed, my nervousness disappeared.