Stopping malaria before the bite

You have recently started to look at malaria as an example of a disease affecting LEDCs. When you start to look at strategies for controlling the disease, one of the things which Mrs W will be emphasising is that there is, as yet, no vaccine which will offer protection from contracting the disease.There are, however, reports today of a vaccine which, when administered to people living in affected areas, will kill the parasite within the mosquitoes who injest the blood of vaccinated victims. You have to think about this! What this means is that there would be no benefit to vaccinated individuals (they might still contract the disease) but there could be long term benefits for their community. The snag is....... how many people will agree to be vaccinated if there is no benefit to their own health? You can read about this new development in the fight against malaria by clicking on the image above.

You might also like to have a look over the holidays at the Roll Back Malaria website which contains a wealth of material which is relevant to this section of the Development and Health unit.