Cameroon Starts World-First Malaria Mass Vaccine Rollout (bbc.com) 54
The world's first routine vaccine programme against malaria has started in Cameroon, in a move projected to save thousands of children's lives across Africa. From a report: The symbolic first jab was given to a baby girl named Daniella at a health facility near Yaounde on Monday. Every year 600,000 people die of malaria in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Children under five make up at least 80% of those deaths. Cameroon is offering the RTS,S vaccine free of charge to all infants up to the age of six months old.
Patients require a total of four doses. Health officials say these will be given at the same time as other routine childhood vaccines to make it easier for parents. It comes after successful pilot campaigns in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi - where the vaccine caused a 13% drop in malaria deaths in children of eligible age, says Unicef. The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.
Patients require a total of four doses. Health officials say these will be given at the same time as other routine childhood vaccines to make it easier for parents. It comes after successful pilot campaigns in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi - where the vaccine caused a 13% drop in malaria deaths in children of eligible age, says Unicef. The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.
Oh great. (Score:3, Funny)
What will we do with the millions of freshly autistic children, and how will we extract the microchips? The only way to win is not to play. We should just bury the 600,000 and count ourselves lucky that that's all we have to do.
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The only reason why this vaccine exists is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. My 1986 biology textbook noted that spending on malaria, which killed more people than any other disease, was only $8 million. That same year in the Untied States alone $588 million was spent on cancer research.
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Re: Oh great. (Score:2)
Hoping that you forgot to put in the /s tag on that post.
No doing this will attract the attention of every conspiracy theory nut job but malaria is a serious and major health issue in that part of the world
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I refuse to do something like add a /s. If it is misconstrued then either it's terrible sarcasm... or it's PERFECT sarcasm. I accept either judgement!
Re: Oh great. (Score:2)
Because using a form of wit thatâ(TM)s best and clearest communicated in the cues that get lost in the written form, and with people who know you is a truly brilliant strategy.
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I guess. But I'd rather be misunderstood. :) /s is perilously close to "explaining the joke" - which is the death of humour.
And so far my mods are 50% troll, 30% funny, 20% insightful - which means it's perfect. My heart swells with pride.
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I guess. But I'd rather be misunderstood. :) /s is perilously close to "explaining the joke" - which is the death of humour.
Agreed. The fun is imagining some fraction of readers out there thinking "is this guy serious?!?".
PS you spelt "humor" wrong.
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Re: Oh great. (Score:1)
In this area, the label anonymous coward truly is apt. If you think this them own it. The Covid vaccine, like almost any vaccine such as seasonal flu reduces severity of infection rather than preventing infection like tetanus.
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Get rid of it (Score:4, Insightful)
As we've seen with the covid vaccines, the measles vaccines [cdc.gov], the polio vaccines [cdc.gov], and the smallpox vaccine [cdc.gov], if it's not 100% effective it's worthless. Just get rid of this and let the people's natural immune system take care of things.
For those who are wondering,
Re:Get rid of it (Score:4, Informative)
The body is not going to clear plasmodium by itself. It was considered a lifetime ailment until modern treatments.
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For those who are wondering, /s.
You are getting dangerously close to the demented crap the nil wits are pushing...
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The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya. As we've seen with the covid vaccines, the measles vaccines [cdc.gov], the polio vaccines [cdc.gov], and the smallpox vaccine [cdc.gov], if it's not 100% effective it's worthless. Just get rid of this and let the people's natural immune system take care of things. For those who are wondering, /s.
At this point, it's gonna take more than an /s to point out sarcasm. These nitwits also believed the 'birds aren't real' lunacy, which was specifically tailored to mock the conspiracy loons, yet snared thousands of them into spreading this new "lie." It seems you can't make something up that's so insane it doesn't stick with them. It's starting to make me think I should dig out my old mock-thesis where I worked through the abundant available evidence that points to God being a Sadist and post it up online.
Re:Get rid of it (Score:5, Interesting)
What is hilarious is one of their tenent beliefs is infiltration by communists into the government, and yet we have a presidential candidate and many of the Republican party who are actively peddling Russian talking points and doing Russia's bidding. In some cases they're even being paid by Russia. Talk about a conspiracy within a conspiracy!
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Go home, Comrade, you're drunk.
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The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives. While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a "silver bullet," argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.
Worse than not a silver bullet. That could be downright dangerous, because unlike viruses, parasites can respond to environmental stressors and potentially mutate (by changing gene expression) to be less affected by those stressors. So something that is 36% effective today could be 0% effective against the dominant strain in a few years.
Meanwhile, newer vaccines [harvard.edu] are supposedly 77% effective in the phase 2b trial, 68% in a subsequent large-scale phase 3 trial, which just ended. Once you give that initial
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Could be desperation, or a fundamental need to be seen as Doing Something About The Problem. Bear in mind that malaria is the leading cause of serious illness throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It's a bigger deal than cholera, in a part of the world that mostly doesn't have reasonable sewage systems. It's worse than AIDS, in the part of the world that has by far the biggest problem with AIDS. Almost everyone in the geopolitical region gets malaria at some point or another. It's
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Bear in mind that malaria is the leading cause of serious illness throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
You're a liar. A big fat right-wing conspiracy liar. Dr. Fauci made it clear the #1 killer is COVID. Stop spreading misinformation about malaria.
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2. You can easily change the leading cause of death, and back it up with real numbers, by adjusting which things you group together into monolithic categories and which ones you split out into smaller categories. Cardiovascular disease can be the leading cause of death, for example, if you lump all cardiovascular problems together. Can
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Hate to break it to you, but viruses mutate all the time [tulane.edu]. It's why there are a multitude of covid and flu variants out there.
So it seems like it would make a lot more sense to wait a few months for them to wait for R21 production to ramp up rather than risk creating a whole population of people with massively inferior immunity.
Since phase 3 just ended we won't know the full results for months, pot
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because unlike viruses, parasites can respond to environmental stressors and potentially mutate Hate to break it to you, but viruses mutate all the time [tulane.edu]. It's why there are a multitude of covid and flu variants out there.
Hate to break it to you, but viruses don't change their genetic expression in response to environmental stressors. They mutate because of copying errors. It's an entirely different kind of mutation. Viruses don't exhibit epigenetic shifts, to the best of my knowledge. And that's potentially a *huge* difference in terms of the ability to mutate quickly (or even instantly in vivo).
So it seems like it would make a lot more sense to wait a few months for them to wait for R21 production to ramp up rather than risk creating a whole population of people with massively inferior immunity. Since phase 3 just ended we won't know the full results for months, potentially a year from now. Better to get some immunity out there even if it's not the best rather than let things as they are now.
I know that sounds better, and pedantically, it is better for 30% of the people exposed to it during those six months or a yea
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Once a new polio vaccine was created, everything worked out. It's why we don't see massive cases any more and it's almost wiped out across the planet.
The continued use of the old vaccine is why there are more instances of vaccine-derived polio globally now than there are naturally occurring cases. Still, nobody will say the old vaccine was worthless, it was always a good risk/reward judgement.
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Once a new polio vaccine was created, everything worked out. It's why we don't see massive cases any more and it's almost wiped out across the planet.
The continued use of the old vaccine is why there are more instances of vaccine-derived polio globally now than there are naturally occurring cases. Still, nobody will say the old vaccine was worthless, it was always a good risk/reward judgement.
It's a little more complicated than that.
The old vaccine yields better protection because it is a live/attenuated virus taken orally, which triggers mucosal immunity, but along with that comes the risk of VDPV, caused by people who haven't been vaccinated (and/or people with weak immune systems?) being exposed to human waste from people who just got vaccinated.
The new vaccine confers less protection, but doesn't have the downstream VPDV risk.
So in areas where natural poliovirus is endemic and common, the li
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This vaccine is aimed at very young children, who are the most likely to die from malaria. If they wait these kids will have missed the opportunity to be vaccinated at all.
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Last year, one person died from measles. In the decade before vaccinations, 400-500 people died per year. How is this worthless? Asking for a friend.
I assume you're a QAnon vaccine conspiracy nut.
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God are you an idiot.
I wrote that finished reading the FULL text. And yup, good post. Sadly, many ppl will not understand about herd immunity, or even the fact that a reduction in cases, means lower costs of health care and improved ability to help others.
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Good luck if you ever need a transfusion, then.
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i will NEVER let a doctor or nurse jab me with a needle ever again
I'd recommend you avoid any sort of medical care altogether. They are all out to get you.
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Good for you, you wear your ignorance proudly.
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It is now time for us to have free health care, but require that anybody getting it, should have to have all of their vaccines, or they pay for their OWN damn health care.
Likewise, I trust that you will not take antibiotics / anti-viral that require shots. After all, you are so fucking knowledgeable about the immune system and KNOW that you will not need either vaccine or antibiotics to stop things like AMR. Right?
Good luck with the darwin award.
Re: Another way to look at it (Score:1)
Luckily malaria is making a comeback in the continental USA. A few more years of unmitigated climate change and big pharma won't have to go Africa.
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But malaria vaccines are special because the first world doesn't have much use for them, because we don't really have malaria. It's a third-world problem. Something like nine out of every ten cases of malaria worldwide, take place in sub-Saharan Africa, and almost all of the rest take place in India, the upper Amazon region, or New Guinea. There are scattered cases here and there in other mostly-third-world regions
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There was a time when malaria was an issue in some of the warmer parts of North America.
Malaria was also endemic in countries like England and Germany in past centuries. And this had nothing to do with climate, but everything with whether there is a health care infrastructure, and whether cases of Malaria are diagnosed and treated. Even poor, hot countries like Sri Lanka were able to get rid of Malaria "simply" by not leaving the Malaria-infected to their fate and transmitting the disease onward.
While a working Malaria vaccine may be nice, having a functional health care system is even better,
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As to vaccine vs functional health care system, I will take a vaccine to all known bugs/cancers over a top notch health care system that knows not how to deal with these bugs. IOW, just like anti-biotics/anti-virals, vaccines and phages are our best line of defense.
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But malaria vaccines are special because the first world doesn't have much use for them, because we don't really have malaria
We had pretty much wiped out Malaria in the 40/50s in America, HOWEVER, it IS now back. It is still small, but it is spreading.
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Cameroon, however, is in a categorically different situation.
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America and Western Europe had wiped it out due to heavy use of DDT, combined with westerners working together and adopting needed practices like removing standing water from tires, etc. That destroyed the mosquito carrying it, and the parasite. However, we stopped DDT usage in the west ( though still used in the rest of the world, though limited ), combined with westerners being
Vaccine reduces toddler deaths by 15% (Score:3)
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And like covid, far far less will die with this than with the diesease itself.
Sadly, it is only idiots that scream about vaccines causing issues when they have not a single clue. In fact, few that fight vaccines have even witnessed someone dying from the disease.
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Thankfully, these ppl are smart enough to take it (Score:2)
Headline story in 20 years? (Score:1)