New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk

An anonymous reader writes "According to a report in Reuters, scientists are celebrating the end of a clinical trial which found a malaria vaccine reduces infection risk by half in children. From the article: 'While scientists say it is no "silver bullet" and will not end the mosquito-borne infection on its own, it is being hailed as a crucial weapon in the fight against malaria and one that could speed the path to eventual worldwide eradication. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work at the point when the parasite enters the human bloodstream after a mosquito bite. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. ... Cohen said that if all goes to plan, RTS,S could be licensed and rolled out by 2015.'"

Re:Child vaccine

[timeOday]

Boy did you walk into that one!

One of the Gates Foundation biggest health initiatives is family planning [gatesfoundation.org].

Family Planning Overview

Family planning saves lives.

One of the most cost-effective public health interventions available today is family planning. Voluntary family planning is a critical lifesaving intervention that can significantly improve the health of women and their families.

Through family planning:

• Maternal mortality is reduced. Family planning could prevent up to one third of all maternal deaths by allowing women to delay motherhood, space births, avoid unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions, and stop childbearing when they have reached their desired family size.
• Deaths and illness among young women are reduced. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for women under 19, with complications of childbirth and unsafe abortion being the major factors. Adolescents aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die in childbirth as those in their 20s, and girls under 15 are five times as likely to die as those in their 20s.
• Child health and survival is improved. Reducing the number of births less than two years apart, births to very young and older women, and higher-order births, family planning lowers child and infant mortality. For example, if women spaced their births at least 36 months apart, almost 3 million deaths to children under age 5 could be averted.

  ...

Seriously, they get it. Enough that they are drawing the ire [jesus-is-savior.com] of certain other groups, for what it's worth.

Re:Poverty is the REAL issue

[j-beda]

When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cured, then another disease will step right up there because more ppl will occupy the same space, but with the same amount of money to solve issues. Actually less overall as well as less per person. Once it is realized by gates that he screwed up, he will not want to solve the next symptom..

I don't think you understand the drain on resources that malaria is. While many do die from malaria, most do not. Most are just chronically sick, and unless you are going to advocate shooting them in the head, these current chronically sick people are a much bigger drain on the entire social structure than the increased costs associated with fewer deaths due to malaria.

Have a read:
http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/363/RBMInfosheet_10.htm [who.int]

"Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than in countries without malaria. Economists believe that malaria is responsible for a ‘growth penalty' of up to 1.3% per year in some African countries. When compounded over the years, this penalty leads to substantial differences in GDP between countries with and without malaria and severely restrains the economic growth of the entire region.

The direct costs of malaria include a combination of personal and public expenditures on both prevention and treatment of the disease. Personal expenditures include individual or family spending on insecticide treated mosquito nets (ITNs), doctors' fees, anti-malarial drugs, transport to health facilities, support for the patient and sometimes an accompanying family member during hospital stays. Public expenditures include spending by government on maintaining health facilities and health care infrastructure, publicly managed vector control, education and research. In some countries with a heavy malaria burden, the disease may account for as much as 40% of public health expenditure, 30-50% of inpatient admissions, and up to 50% of outpatient visits.

The indirect costs of malaria include lost productivity or income associated with illness or death. This might be expressed as the cost of lost workdays or absenteeism from formal employment and the value of unpaid work done in the home by both men and women. In the case of death, the indirect cost includes the discounted future lifetime earnings of those who die.

Malaria has a greater impact on Africa's human resources than simple lost earnings. Although difficult to express in dollar terms, another indirect cost of malaria is the human pain and suffering caused by the disease. Malaria also hampers children's schooling and social development through both absenteeism and permanent neurological and other damage associated with severe episodes of the disease.

The simple presence of malaria in a community or country also hampers individual and national prosperity due to its influence on social and economic decisions. The risk of contracting malaria in endemic areas can deter investment, both internal and external and affect individual and household decision making in many ways that have a negative impact on economic productivity and growth."