The roll-out of a new affordable vaccine, combined with breakthroughs in the genetic modification of mosquitoes, means that a world free of malaria is "finally within sight".Â
That's the view of Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of India-based drugs manufacturer the Serum Institute, as this month babies in the Ivory Coast and South Sudan became the first to receive a dose of the R21 vaccine. Hailed as a game-changer by scientists, it could see the complete eradication of malaria within a decade.
How does the new vaccine work? R21 targets the first stage of the parasite's life cycle before it gets to the liver, and is combined with an immune-boosting agent, or adjuvant.
Trials have shown it to be 79% effective at preventing the disease in young people, and its production capacity and low price give it a "huge advantage" over the only other malaria vaccine, RTS,S, which was released earlier this year, The Times said. "If this was a $10 vaccine, just forget it, you wouldn't be able to reach the kind of countries we have because the budgets just wouldn't allow it," said Poonawalla.Â
Having launched in the Ivory Coast and South Sudan, targeted at children under three, the vaccine roll-out will expand to a further 30 countries in Africa.
What else is being done? The WHO Global Malaria Programme goal is to reduce cases of malaria by 90% before 2030.
Measures in place to achieve this include the "early detection and diagnosis of malaria cases", said Al Jazeera, as well as "the use of insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying".
Can malaria be eliminated? Despite huge strides made in recent years, the WHO warned that some challenges remain. "Countries, sub-national areas and communities are situated at different points along the path towards malaria elimination, and their rate of progress will differ," it said in a recent report.
Nevertheless, the WHO remains optimistic that its ambitious objectives can be met, going so far as to classify malaria as being in the "final stage" of elimination.
"I think the whole thing is doable, not in the next five years, but maybe in the next 10," said Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford. For the first time in history, "eradication is beginning to look really credible". |