BBC World and Rockhopper TV invite you to watch the race toward one of the most urgently needed immunizations of our time: a vaccine to protect young African children against the deadly malaria parasite.
Driven to conquer a disease that each year kills more than a million people
and sickens countless others—in Africa a child dies every 30 seconds
from malaria—scientists have reached for every modern tool available
to wage war on a parasite so old and resilient its DNA has been found in ancient
Egyptian mummies.
Kill or Cure? The Malaria Vaccine takes viewers into the starkly
different worlds of these cutting edge investigators who may be moving us
tantalizingly close to an achievement unheard of in the history of immunizations—an
effective vaccine against a parasiti
c disease.
One of these scientists, Dr. Stephen Hoffman, works in the labs of Sanaria, Inc., just outside the US capital, guiding a team that harvests millions of malaria parasites by hand from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes and irradiating them to help create a “whole-parasite” vaccine.
Meanwhile, Dr. Salim Abdulla works out of a field hospital in rural Tanzania, testing a vaccine candidate in an environment where the suffering of malaria can be seen everywhere—in children, their mothers, in entire communities. His clinical trial is focused on GlaxoSmithKline Biological’s RTS,S vaccine, which uses a component of the surface of the parasite to induce human immunity.
Uniting these vaccine development efforts is the fact that both approaches have received the backing of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a global program whose many partnerships are bringing the world closer than ever to the elusive yet critically important malaria vaccine.
Kill or Cure? The Malaria Vaccine will be broadcast on BBC World beginning Sunday, April 22 at 0530 GMT. It is then repeated for the following week at these times:
• Sunday, April 22 at 1630 GMT (except Asia Pacific or South Asia)
• Monday, April 23 at 0930 GMT & 1230 GMT (Asia Pacific only)
• Tuesday, April 24 at 1530 GMT
• Wednesday, April 25 at 0130 GMT (except Asia Pacific or South Asia) & 0730 GMT
Visit the channel’s online television listings to find out when it will air in your time zone. You may also check for updates at www.malariavaccine.org for more opportunities to view this documentary.
MVI’s support for the production of Kill or Cure? The Malaria Vaccine was made possible by a grant from the ExxonMobil Foundation through its Africa Health Initiative.
MVI’s mission is to accelerate the development of promising malaria vaccines and ensure their availability and accessibility in the developing world. We welcome your questions and comments at info@malariavaccine.org, and encourage you to share this update with others who might be interested.
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