Banjul,8/23/2002 (IRIN) - British scientists on Monday began a new round
of field trials in The Gambia to gauge the effectiveness of a vaccine
against malaria.
"We are not close to a final vaccine yet, although we have got to a stage
where we have good evidence to suggest that this will be an effective
vaccine against malaria," Trials Coordinator Dr. Vasee Moorthy told IRIN
from the Gambian town of Farafenni, where the new tests are being
conducted.
The team of scientists from Oxford University and the British Medical
Research Council did a first round of clinical trials in The Gambia in
September 2000. They also conducted tests on volunteers in the United
Kingdom. Moorthy said these volunteers, who were deliberately infected
with malaria, showed positive results after the vaccine was tried on them.
"We hope to see the same in The Gambia and that the vaccine will be
effective in preventing malaria," he said.
By the end of September, some 360 healthy adults in The Gambia's
mosquito-infested North Bank Division, which includes Farafenni, will be
injected with the vaccine and then observed for any signs of malaria.
Moorthy said the vaccine was the first to target the disease once it had
entered the body cells. Previous malaria vaccines had only been able to
attack the parasite before it entered the cells, he said. He was hopeful
the new vaccine would be effective in preventing malaria. "Rather than
using the malaria parasite itself," he explained, "we are using a purified
preparation based on fragments of the malaria parasite's own DNA."
It is estimated that the disease kills up to a million people in Africa
each year, two-thirds of them children. It also affects other parts of the
developing world, but Moorthy believes the Northern Hemisphere may not be
spared for long. "If an effective vaccine is not developed soon," he said,
"cases of malaria and deaths from this disease will continue to rise over
the next few years and will spread to parts of Europe and America from
which it had been eradicated."
There has been evidence that climate change, social instability and
increased resistance to pesticides and treatment are hampering the battle
against malaria.
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