Malaria has been a torn on a flesh, one of the greatest threats to life humanity has ever faced for ages. Infants and children are mostly the victims of the deadly disease which has proven hard to crackdown for ages, but the new development is highly welcoming; malaria vaccine could be the best alternative to put dangerous threats malaria has posed in Africa on hold, the vaccine – RTS,S – was deemed to be effective six years ago.
Dangerous havocs malaria has caused in Africa, has seen infants vulnerable to malaria and has attributed high child mortality to malaria, the World Health Organization has mandated that the malaria vaccine should be enrolled to sub-Sahara Africa to help and mitigate high malaria transmission. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said it was “a historic moment”. This is to show the level of commitment exhibit to put a stop to malaria, he went on and said “the long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control, could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.”
Long-term quest for a realistic Africa
Malaria is a parasite that destroys our blood cells in order to reproduce, and it’s spread by the bite of blood-sucking mosquitoes. Prior to the coming effect of malaria vaccine efforts has been in place to stop the spread of malaria, bed-nets were very common as nursing-mothers were advised to sleep with their babies under the bed-net, drugs and insecticides have all helped reduce malaria. The highest scores of malarian havocs in Africa were in 2019 260,000 children died from the disease.
It is a remarkable moment in hard-fought battle to knock malaria off the balance. The vaccine was developed by GSK, a pharmaceutical giant, it aimed at not substituting the measures which have been in place to mitigate malaria such as insecticide and bed-nets. It aimed at getting closer to the goal of zero deaths from malaria, this vaccine would not be used outside Africa where different forms of malaria, which the vaccine can’t protect against, are more prevalent.
One thing is to make the malaria vaccine available which is a huge achievement and another is to make sure that children and infants who are in dire need of this vaccine get vaccinated, as soon as practicable. It is a good day in fight against malaria, and be able to put off scary and fright instincts malaria has inflicted on people for ages, it is really a welcome development.
