29 October 2004
editorial
Lagos — THE current initiative to develop an effective malaria vaccine by an international consortium of researchers and scientists holds encouraging prospects for Africa and other endemic malaria regions.
Funded and sponsored by a leading pharmaceutical company, Glaxo SmithKline (GSK), Gates Foundation, Malaria Vaccine Initiative, an NGO and Mozambique's health ministry, the pioneering vaccine is specifically targeted at the deadly plasmodium faluparum which has for several centuries decimated millions of adults and children in the tropics.
The vaccine which has the nod of the World Health Organization (WHO) is the first in 25 years to demonstrate significant capability to protect human adult volunteers against an experimental infection of malaria parasite.
Preliminary results of the vaccine's clinical trials in the Maputo province of Mozambique, published in the Lancet, a British medical journal also indicated the vaccine's capability to induce protection against malaria in children between one and four years.
Subsequent trials of the initiative, if successful and duly certified, may eventually lead to inclusion of malaria vaccines in childhood routine vaccinations in malarial countries by 2010. Should this feat be accomplished, the enormous costs imposed on the tropical region by malaria, human and economic losses would have been reduced dramatically.
However, against the backdrop of several claims by researchers in and outside Africa of cures for malaria, which eventually turned out to be spurious, the latest development will justifiably elicit cynicisms until its virility is well tested and authenticated.
However, it is still a heart warming development that what seems to be an effective antidote against malaria scourge may be on the way. Good enough the vaccine in trial has potentials that remarkably differ from the existing cocktail of drugs that do not hold a panacea for the disease.
The most tragic aspect of malaria in Africa in particular is that it has been accepted through the years as a part of the normal burden of the zone, with little hope of ever containing its onslaught. Consequent upon this costly resignation by the people of Africa and most of the tropics, occasioned by lack of will and commitment by governments, the life-threatening parasitic disease assails the region without a viable check. The cost to the African continent has been enormous.
Annually in Africa, malaria kills more people than the dreaded Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) or any other disease for that matter.
Federal Ministry of Health and United States Agency for International Aids (USAID) sources put the annual casualty figure from malaria to be at least two million people. Of course, Africa bears the brunt of this assault. And Nigeria is the heart of Africa, even in this matter. Added to this human toll, about N132 billion is estimated to be lost annually in man-hours to malaria fever in Nigeria alone. The larger African estimate of lost man hour is expectedly astounding.
Malaria remains a potent threat to life and survival in the tropics. Worse still, it has a deadlier impact on children. With 40 per cent of the world's population, mostly those living in the world's poorest countries, at risk of malaria, the anopheles mosquito transmissible disease, has remained a major cause of prenatal mortality, low birth weight and maternal anaemia.
Unfortunately, several attempts by government and international coalitions to contain the disease such as the Roll-Back Malaria have remained mere palliatives to the epidemic, which clearly requires more stringent and permanent measures to combat.
This is the backdrop against which the GSK-led initiative which aims to knock off malaria in a more permanent way is coming. The wide interest in this new vaccine initiative is, therefore, very understandable.
Government should do well to pay close attention to the development of this vaccine, which according to WHO requires further work for it to be certificated. All of Africa, indeed, should keenly follow development in this emerging protective serum. Governments across the African continent and indeed much of the third world which have failed over the decades to take the front row in committed strategic initiatives against malaria should be ready to make financial commitment to the project if need be. There is also the need for African scientists to be involved at this stage of the exploration. Their background and natural understanding of the texture and peculiarities of the troubled tropical zone may inform invaluable input in such an initiative.
The clinical trials in Mozambique presents a good opportunity for indigenous pharmacologists and pharmaceutical companies to contribute their own quota to this research in order to guard against producing a vaccine that is inappropriate for the African environment.
The benefit to Africa of an eventual discovery of a vaccine for malaria can only be imagined. The millions of dollars expended annually on battling malaria and the huge sum set aside by the international consortium on this venture are resources that could easily would have been deployed to give impetus to critical areas of human and economic development in Africa. The enormous financial commitment to the malaria vaccine project should still be seen, though, as an investment in laying a foundation for a better and more productive Africa.
The research team and the pharmaceutical company should remain focused in developing the malaria vaccine, bearing in mind that if the vaccine is successful the reward for the investment will be tremendous.
It is not enough for GSK to appeal to wealthy countries to subsidise the costs of this expensive vaccine for poor countries. African governments should rise to the challenge of providing some support to ensure accessibility of poor people to this vaccine when it is due. Malaria is more or less everybody's disease in the tropics, and governments are in good positions to affect the price of the vaccine at the market.
In the interest of humanity, and all those living in malarial zones, the price of this vaccine when it materializes must be such that all those who need it will have access to it.
.We look forward to the eventual development and introduction of a viable malaria vaccine to mitigate the devastating social and economic impact of malaria in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
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