|
Fact Box Level: 7.571 Tokens: 364 Types: 199 TTR: 0.547 |
The Search for a Vaccine Against Malaria
The fight to eradicate malaria from the world is gradually being lost. A recent report by the World Health Organization speaks of a resurgence of malaria in some areas where it had been eliminated. Coming as it does at the very time when another killer disease is being finally stamped out, this news is particularly disappointing. But the success of the anti-smallpox campaign illustrates, by contrast, the central problem facing any attempt to eradicate malaria.
There is no vaccine to protect against malaria, and no likelihood of one in the near future. The attack on malaria has, for this reason, resolved itself into an attack on the mosquitoes which spread it. This means spending a lot of money—money to drain pools where the mosquitoes breed, and money to spray the insects' haunts with insecticide. The money has run out.
For the time being, then, the best thing that can be done in the poorer parts of the world will be to treat the disease itself with drugs rather than attack the mosquito. However, a cheap and effective malaria vaccine is badly needed.
To make vaccines, it is necessary to culture the malarial organism—the parasite which lives in red blood cells. It cannot be done. Human malarial parasites cannot be grown artificially. Worse still, they cannot be grown in animals either with the exception of one rare South American monkey, the owl monkey. Even if there were plenty of owl monkeys—which there are not—there would still be grave risks of contamination of the malarial vaccine with monkey viruses, some of which are deadly to man.
More money and more research workers are urgently needed now, but we are unlikely to see a safe vaccine against malaria for at least several decades.
Short Answer Questions
(Keys.)