The BBC reported some massive global health news yesterday:
A cheap malaria vaccine that can be produced on a massive scale has been recommended for use by the World Health Organization (WHO)….
the key difference is the ability to manufacture the University of Oxford vaccine – called R21 – at scale.
The world’s largest vaccine manufacturer – the Serum Institute of India – is already lined up to make more than 100 million doses a year and plans to scale up to 200 million doses a year….
The WHO said the new R21 vaccine would be a “vital additional tool”. Each dose costs $2-4 (£1.65 to £3.30) and four doses are needed per person. That is about half the price of RTS,S.
This is huge global health news. For the price ranging from a mediocre not-fast food burger to a somewhat fancy burger at a fast casual restaurant, an individual can get fully vaccinated against a deadly and pervasive disease. The current pipeline has 25 million full vaccination sequences per year with a plan to get to 50 million full vaccinations in a relatively short time frame.
This is huge and good news.
Reader Interactions
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OzarkHillbilly
Very good news indeed.
Baud
I believe malaria is the deadliest disease of all time.
catclub
Yes. I know that for a long time the Gates Foundation put a lot into relatively hopeless malaria research.
I hope that helped (in some way – maybe maintaining researchers) in this breakthrough.
sab
The malaria vaccine is only 75% effective. Still a miracle. Covid vaccine is effectdive in the 90+% range
ETA If you are in the unfortunate 25% group, do you have a less horrible case of malaria with the vaccine?
I live in an area with less toxic mosquitos, and it is still hard to avoid being bitten.
sdhays
Does this include multiple orders of expensive booze? The NYT needs to know. //
Seriously, amazing news!
catclub
@sab:
That is not ONLY 75% effective. That is 75% effective compared to the other best vaccine that was 36% effective.
In addition, children typically have 3 or 4 incidents of malaria a year. Knocking that down to only one is huge.
eclare
Great news!
Ian R
@Baud: I’m pretty sure that’s tuberculosis, which certainly wins for modern times, if not all time.
MattF
The life-cycle of the malaria parasite is ridiculously complex. Hard to even imagine what the target of a vaccine would be.
Elizabelle
Wunderbar. I hope these creators win a Nobel Prize for this work. (So happy about yesterday’s NP for Medicine. For developing Covid vaccines. Great choice.)
Scout211
Wow. This is great news!
And in more good health news:
Drugmakers agree to negotiate drug prices with government, White House says
Mousebumples
Great news! Between malaria and RSV, that’s 2 big vaccine targets that have new therapies!
Busy day here, but we’ve got postcards and music tonight at 8pm blog time! Hope to see you there. 🤩
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It will be a godsend in the tropics. Malaria can linger for months and make you really weak.
Jeffro
After hearing about GiveWell, we added a couple of malaria-focused charities to our annual giving. It’s a good way* to make really effective use of one’s charitable contributions.
*other than giving to Democratic candidates, of course. =)
Hope everyone has a great Tuesday!
Ken
But do you need a target? I would think this works like other vaccines — just let the immune system know about this thing it might see in the future, and it takes it from there.
My own analogy for the immune system is Tony Shaloub’s character from Monk. It just wanders around, vaguely smiling at things, until it suddenly says “That’s not right….” Then it puts on a hockey mask, pulls out a machete, and starts killing everything. (The latter is not something Shaloub’s character did.)
opiejeanne
@Baud: My niece works for the UN and while she was assigned to Uganda pre-Covid, she caught malaria. I think it complicated her health when she was pregnant and she moved to Italy because Uganda didn’t have the medical resources she needed to ensure a healthy outcome. She and the baby were fine and she’s produced a second little boy since then.
My grandfather had malaria and lived to 82, probably caught when he was a young man 1900-ish and was working in St Louis, and it may have shortened his life because his family tends to live well into their 90s.
schrodingers_cat
A news organization, NewsClick and its employees that has often held Modi’s Brahminical Junta Party accountable has been raided under spurious charges in Delhi
The laptops and phones of their journalists and copy editors have been seized. Mother of Democracy? more like stepmother of democracy
I sincerely wish that Biden hadn’t given Modi the state dinner. It makes all his talk of defending democracy hollow. Its as if he only cares about democracy at home and in Europe. Celebrating the Indian Orban at the WH undermines the pro democracy message IMHO.
Edmund dantes
@Ken: Limited-time deal for Prime Members: Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive https://a.co/d/iueQrBD
really well done book on the immune system.
it’s really amazing how much of the immune system is just random chance/law of large numbers
satby
This is a godsend for parents of small children in malaria endemic areas, especially Africa. Last year it killed 619k+, mostly children under 5.
AM in NC
Wow! Really fantastic news. Thanks for sharing this, David. With all the human-caused horrors, it’s nice to see that sometimes we can be pretty amazing too.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: In the late 1850s, Ulysses Grant was hit with debilitating bouts of chills and fevers due to malaria. This forced him to give up on his attempt to make a living on a farm just outside St. Louis, and to go work at his father’s leather shop in Galena, Illinois.
According to an article in Entomology Today, at least 8 U.S. Presidents had malaria. George Washington “contracted malaria at age 17” and “had recurring bouts throughout his life.” James Munroe caught malaria visiting “a particulary swampy area” of the Mississippi shore, while Andrew Jackson caught the disease fighting the Seminoles in Florida.
The article says both Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield contracted malaria growing up in the Midwest (although as a young man Lincoln rode a cargo raft to New Orleans and may have contracted malaria on that trip).
Theodore Roosevelt contracted malaria on a visit to the Amazon, and John F. Kennedy contracted malaria during his Navy service in the Solomon Islands.
Ulysses Grant’s malaria may have changed the course of the Civil War. Grant was a staunch Union man and would sought a commission in the U.S. Army whether he lived in Missouri or Illinois. But Galena’s Congressman, Elihu Washburn, had been a political ally of President Lincoln ever since their service together in the Illinois legislature. Washburn’s advocacy for Grant fueled the general’s rise and helped protect him from critics, until Grant’s manifest abilities won him the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies in March of 1864.
Grant’s experience with malaria might also have informed his notorious comment that Venice would be a nice city “if only it were drained.”
*Entomology Today is published by the American Entomological Society. The article is titled, “At Least Eight American Presidents had Malaria” and is dated Feruary 17, 2014.
MattF
@Geminid: Hah. Never occurred to me that Venice would be a perfect place to catch malaria.
sab
@Geminid: My dad enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted for Korea, and he stayed in the Naval Reserves for twenty years afterwards. As a medical guy they had him working with bloodbanks in Ohio. One of their huge mostly secret fears was that Vietnam vets would bring malaria back to the midwest.
Marmot
@schrodingers_cat:
I know. That was dispiriting. I think the White House is trying to court democratic-ish countries too, in order to counter China. But man, the backfire is dangerous.
Marmot
No one has asked, so here’s my opinion.
Please, please, for the love of science stop referring to bacteria, viruses, and protozoa as “bugs.” Especially in this case, since the malaria parasite is actually transmitted by an insect.
Other than that, this is fantastic news! Thanks David!
schrodingers_cat
@Marmot: Like all bullies Modi is a coward he is not going to stand up to China. He has been mum about Chinese incursions into Indian territory.
Brachiator
This is very hopeful news.
patrick II
Is the vaccine of the new Mrna types or is it a vaccine developed with traditional methods?
New Deal democrat
I am currently reading “1493,” about the exchange of plants, animals – and diseases – between the Old and New Worlds after 1492.
According to the book, malaria played an important role in the slave trade. Malaria originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and whether because of natural selection, or being infected as infants when the disease is much milder, about 97% of Africans display resistance to it.
So when it was accidentally introduced to the Americas, it hit European colonizers and Native Americans with the virulence of a virgin epidemic, while African slaves were largely unbothered by it. As a result, plantations in the warmer areas where malaria could thrive found that African slaves lasted much longer than either Native captives or indentured Europeans. Hence enslaved Africans made that much more economic sense.
RaflW
This is excellent news.
That said, I look forward to the opportunity to pay about $500 (or at least be billed that amt before insurance) some day to be able to get the shots.* I say this because my latest Covid jab ‘cost’ $158, according to the paperwork. Yes my out of pocket was 0, and I’d imagine my payor has a deal with the pharmacy-grocery chain, but that’s the sticker price. :(
*Not sure I’ll qualify as needing the shots (and don’t want to line-jump people with greater need) but I hope to travel to endemic areas in ’24 and beyond with a nonprofit based here in the twin cities.
eldorado
i’m not able to find much followup on the gmo mosquito releases other than one company’s outcomes apparently didn’t help much and they’ve withdrawn some proposals
anyone up on this?
Villago Delenda Est
Bobby the Lesser no doubt has already denounced this.
Brachiator
@New Deal democrat:
The trade-off is Sickle cell. Also not sure about the 97 percent figure. Is malaria a big issue in East Africa and Southern Africa?
I thought it was more smallpox and other diseases that were significant in Europe that were brought to the Americas. Yellow fever was later brutal in some areas. Any discussion of that disease?