Watching Africa

It turns out that one thing the new world will contain, to my surprise and everyone's delight, is a vaccine for malaria.  “The World Health Organization has recommended the widespread rollout of the first malaria vaccine, in a move experts hope could save tens of thousands of children’s lives each year across Africa.”

Most of us are not familiar with the cost of malaria, almost exclusively paid by the children of Africa.  After a very long life of reading non-fiction, I know only that it is a subtle horror, transmitted by mosquitoes, that sucks the vitality and promise out of generation after generation of Africans.

Wikipedia tells us:

When properly treated, people with malaria can usually expect a complete recovery. However, severe malaria can progress extremely rapidly and cause death within hours or days. In the most severe cases of the disease, fatality rates can reach 20%, even with intensive care and treatment.  Over the longer term, developmental impairments have been documented in children who have suffered episodes of severe malaria. Chronic infection without severe disease can occur in an immune-deficiency syndrome associated with a decreased responsiveness to Salmonella bacteria and the Epstein–Barr virus.

During childhood, malaria causes anaemia during a period of rapid brain development, and also direct brain damage resulting from cerebral malaria. Some survivors of cerebral malaria have an increased risk of neurological and cognitive deficits, behavioural disorders, and epilepsy. Malaria prophylaxis was shown to improve cognitive function and school performance in clinical trials when compared to placebo groups.

Over 400,000 people died of malaria in 2019, the vast majority of them in Africa.  And over 270,000 of them were children under five years old.  Children can become re-infected quickly - often as many as four times in a season - and many of those who survive are likely to suffer neurologic damage and cognitive difficulties for the rest of their lives.

So that's what's at stake.  Give a precise regimen of anti-malarial medications plus the vaccine, "there was a 70% reduction in hospitalisation or death."  What could a few generations of genuinely healthy Africans achieve in the new world?

And isn't it ironic that a vaccine for this one-continent, parasitic disease, that has been 30 years in the making, may change the landscape of the new world in a more significant way than our miracle COVID vaccines that will eventually overcome the pandemic?

I can't wait to watch Africa for the next decade.