The disease is a leading killer of under fives across Africa. But trials for a new vaccine suggest an end to the death toll could be in sight
it demonstrated high-level efficacy of 77%, results expected to be echoed at the end of a larger trial in four African countries.
When the results were shown to her and her colleagues, she recalls: “The data was being presented. And … you get goosebumps. It was absolutely extraordinary. It still is.” At that point, before the world had seen the speed at which Covid vaccines were developed and manufactured, the idea that R21 would be approved by 2023 had seemed ambitious. “Then you see that,” Hamaluba says, “and you think: gosh, this might be possible.
The response to the pandemic has puzzled the community in Kilifi, a sleepy coastal town, which – in partnership between the Kenya Medical Research Institute , the Wellcome Trust and Oxford university – gained a world-class health research unit in 1989. When staff returned to work after Kenya’s lockdown, the unit’s community liaison group faced awkward questions, recalls Mary Mwangoma, community facilitator at Kemri-Wellcome Trust.
A boy walks from school towards his house in Junju, Kilifi County. The tropical coastal region is a high-transmission area for malaria. Things have improved significantly in the past two decades: most children sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets, and most cases Chakaya sees are mild or moderate. At the dispensary, medics use rapid diagnostic tests that detect malaria in less than 20 minutes.
A community health worker checks the pulse of Mama Raheli’s son, who took part in the malaria vaccine trial, at Junju dispensary.
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