I was looking through the al jazeera news feed and I saw a story about a new
vaccine for malaria that could cut the risk of getting the disease in half. I
chose to blog about this story because this could be something very relevant in
the near future if the vaccine continues to have good results in the trials. This is one of the only positive stories that I found in the news feed so I decided it would
be worth writing about.
Malaria is a disease spread by mosquito's that is a large cause of death in
people living in parts of Africa and very remote parts of Asia.
This new vaccine will help reduce the risk for young children to get malaria.
The first trial showed that children aged from five to seventeen months had reduced
their risk of contracting the disease by up to 56 percent after three doses of the vaccine. This vaccine is so
remarkable because it is the first vaccine to be successful that targets
parasites instead of bacteria or viruses. This trial is the largest malaria vaccine trial up to date with over 15 thousand young children involved. This trial is going to continue for two more years so that the creators of the vaccine can evaluate how effective it is against preventing malaria. Hopefully the trials continue to
produce good results so that malaria will be better controlled and be less of a
problem so that researchers can focus on preventing other deadly diseases.
Yeah, malaria is a huge deal in many parts of the world--and it's actually quite cheap to cure if you have access to the right medicines. Unfortunately, the people most vulnerable to the disease seem to have the least access, which is why so many people die each year from it. Hope you'll follow the results of these trials and see where the story leads...
Where's the link to this story? :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, malaria is a huge deal in many parts of the world--and it's actually quite cheap to cure if you have access to the right medicines. Unfortunately, the people most vulnerable to the disease seem to have the least access, which is why so many people die each year from it. Hope you'll follow the results of these trials and see where the story leads...