A new malaria vac­cine enters it’s final stage of test­ing. The vac­cine could cut in half the num­ber of malaria deaths each year.

Glax­o­SmithK­line has been devel­op­ing the vac­cine, and it may be pro­vided for free if there is enough fund­ing from sources such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion and others.

From the Asso­ci­ated Press, writer Jason Straz­iuso gives us plenty of hope in this story.

There is new hope, how­ever, in this ver­dant area where Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s rel­a­tives live. A vac­cine that appears to be able to pre­vent the dis­ease in about 50 per­cent of chil­dren, is now under­go­ing the final stage of testing.

If reg­u­la­tors deter­mine the vac­cine is safe, it could be on the mar­ket in three to five years — the first vac­cine against a human parasite.

Tens of mil­lions of Africans are plagued by malaria every year, and more than a third of the hos­pi­tal beds in this rural Kenyan region next to Lake Vic­to­ria are ded­i­cated to its vic­tims. More than 1 mil­lion chil­dren die of the dis­ease in Africa annu­ally, a crip­pling eco­nomic drain that pro­longs a cycle of dis­ease and poverty through­out the continent.

Malaria is also preva­lent in parts of Asia, the Mid­dle East and Cen­tral and South America.

This vac­cine was devel­oped specif­i­cally for Africa and will only pre­vent the African strain of the dis­ease. Experts say it would be a his­toric advancement.

“Some may say, ’50 per­cent, that’s not great.’ And that’s true. If you get a measles vac­cine, you’re not going to get measles again,” said Dr. Dave Jones, a U.S. Army colonel and direc­tor of a clinic in nearby Kombewa oper­ated by the Wal­ter Reed Army Insti­tute of Research and the Kenya Med­ical Research Insti­tute.
…

More than $500 mil­lion has been spent on the com­bined efforts by drug maker Glax­o­SmithK­line and the PATH Malaria Vac­cine Ini­tia­tive, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion. The Phase III test­ing is being done at 11 sites in seven African coun­tries on 16,000 chil­dren under the age of 18 months.

The goal is to immu­nize chil­dren against malaria dur­ing their youngest high-risk years, and then for them to develop their own nat­ural immu­ni­ties as they age.