World Malaria Day 2009
Counting malaria out
A perspective from MVI Director Dr. Christian Loucq
On the second World Malaria Day, MVI celebrates the public-private collaborations that have placed us at the forefront of the race to develop new tools to beat back malaria. These collaborations, spanning five continents, have yielded remarkable achievements and have brought us to a high point in our efforts to advance malaria vaccine development.
This year marks a defining moment in our work. Over the next few months, MVI and partners will begin enrolling up to 16,000 children at 11 trial sites in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals' RTS,S vaccine candidate will be the first malaria vaccine to reach a large-scale Phase 3 trial, the largest malaria vaccine trial to be conducted in Africa.
MVI support is also helping to expand the range of malaria vaccines in clinical trials. In another testament to strong public-private collaborations, a unique malaria vaccine candidate is poised to enter a Phase 1 clinical trial. Unlike other malaria vaccine candidates, Sanaria Inc.'s approach deploys a weakened form of the whole malaria parasite instead of small portions of the parasite.
World Malaria Day marks a concerted effort by the malaria community to control and gradually eliminate a disease that still kills close to one million people each year, almost all of them young children in Africa. Underlying the community's strategy to make malaria prevention and treatment services widely available to people who need them, is the need to expand the research and development of vaccines and other new technologies.
Malaria is finally receiving the attention it warrants. Programs devoted to expanding access to current interventions are beginning to have an impact. Research into new tools, such as vaccines, is moving forward. Indeed, the world may be just five years away from having a first malaria vaccine ready for use. Much more will have to be done, however, to achieve the goal of first controlling malaria and, ultimately, eradicating it. Expanding the use of existing strategies and developing new tools will require significant financial resources, innovative partnerships, sustained political will, and lots of new ideas.
Find out more
- Read the article, "Counting malaria out" authored by MVI Leadership Team members, Ashley Birkett and Sally Ethelston, published in the April 13 issue of Parliament Magazine.
- Dr. Ruth Owusu, Research Physician and Clinical Research Fellow at the Kintampo Heath Research Center in Ghana, was a panelist at a World Malaria Day forum on Capitol Hill. Read her remarks here.
- Visit PATH's Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership for daily reflections of World Malaria Day in Zambia and Roll Back Malaria's World Malaria Day page to find out more about how the global malaria community is marking this occasion.
