"A new vaccine shows promising results"

Read the full article in the Economist. (Subscription required.)

"Experimental tests on 1,442 children living in Mozambique now indicate that an effective vaccine might be possible. The children were given three shots of a candidate vaccine in 2003, at which time they were between one and four years old. Some 18 months later, the cases of life-threatening malaria in these children were halved and, overall, clinical cases were cut by 35%. The results—which are similar to those reported at the six-month stage and suggest that the vaccine does not become less effective over time—were presented at the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria's conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and published online in a British medical journal, the Lancet, on November 15th."

The December issue of Scientific American (now available on the newstands, but not on the Internet until next month) has a good article, "Tackling Malaria" by Claire Panosian Dunavan. She describes the magnitude of the malaria problem, and advocates a multifaceted approach, eventually using drugs, pesticides, bed nets, enrionmental cleanup, and engineering to fight malaria.