The Gates Foundation is hosting a big confab on malaria in Seattle this week. This includes a long awaited announcement today of a huge, seven country randomized test of a pediatric and infant malaria vaccine.
If this vaccine proves successful, it will be another notch on the belt for a group of global health pioneers that are slowly (and not so slowly) eliminating Malaria world wide. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a terrible and burdensom diseae. Some 225 million people in 99 countries contract malaria and over three quarters of a million people die from the disease — mostly children under five in Sub-Saharan Africa. But the disease is also very firmly on the retreat. Here are stills from an interactive Malaria Elimination Map from the USCF Global Health Group.
