New Malaria Vaccine Passes Major Human Trial
By Chioma Umeha In recent years, the world has recorded tremendous progress in the fight against malaria. The World Malaria Report 2015 shows malaria mortality rates have fallen by 66 per cent among all age groups and by 71 per cent among children under five in Africa since 2000. But, there is still work to do just as a new vaccine developed by a US-based team is showing promising results, and could accelerate progress. Creating the vaccine, researchers infected people with weakened, genetically modified forms of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite in safety trials. The weakened malaria parasite, while unable to complete its lifecycle and develop into full-blown malaria, exposes the immune system to the disease and stimulates a response that could block an actual infection. After tests on ten people during trials, the results were encouraging: there were no cases of full malaria infection and no significant side-effects. Describing the positive test res