the vaccine that could save millions

I would like to take you on a journey - of despair, hope, discovery and innovation behind one of the biggest problems in global health: malaria.

Let me start by painting a picture: a picture of a place where prevailing conditions actively work against the aim of restoring health to those in need; a place where, despite the lack of staff, of funding and infrastructure, ordinary men and women perform nothing short of miracles, day after day after day.

We are standing in Kumasi hospital in central Ghana. Despite the many dedicated and passionate healthcare professionals, it is a bleak place, no more so than at the end of a long corridor, where you will find the severe malaria ward. Here there are 14 beds, many of which have two, or even three children in them. This is where the sickest children come, many travelling great distances on foot.

And yet here, in this small room, you will find hope. This is a place where treatment is given – antimalarials, fluids, antibiotics, which fight the disease and restore the child’s strength. The odds are stacked in favour of the older children, those who have built up some kind of natural resistance and whose immune systems are better able to fight back. Doctors and nurses patiently attend to the children and, for the lucky ones, the ones who arrive in time, slowly, very slowly, the disease regresses and comes under control.

Kumasi hospital is a very typical place in Africa and I’ve seen the work these healthcare professionals do in places like Ghana. They are, to my mind, heroes who fight an impossible fight against diseases like malaria, TB and HIV/Aids.

With malaria, their battle is colossal: three million people die each year because of the disease – mostly infants, young children and pregnant women. One child every thirty seconds. With malaria, it’s 9/11 each and every day.

This is a human tragedy. It also brings with it significant societal impact and devastating consequences for Africa’s economic development. The World Health Organisation has calculated that malaria costs Africa more than $12 billion a year and has resulted in African GDP being 32 per cent lower than it would have been if malaria had been eradicated in the Sixties.

So what can the pharmaceutical industry do to help? Well, we must do what we do best, to seek out new and innovating ways to fight the disease. Industry is developing new products to treat malaria, but the malaria parasite is a cruel enemy. Resistance to existing treatments can develop quickly.

A real breakthrough, though, would be to prevent the disease itself. For the past 20 years, GSK has been working on the malaria vaccine. In Agogo, just three hours’ drive from Kumasi hospital, a little boy, Ernest, has just been vaccinated with a new and promising malaria vaccine as part of an ongoing clinical trial. His mother is overcome with emotion and gratitude. She has already lost two of her children to malaria. She hopes that the vaccine will ensure she doesn’t lose a third one.

The trial is one of an ongoing programme of clinical trials across Africa, bringing the vaccine closer and closer to market. The path has not been an easy one and, as is so often the case, it has needed great champions to see it through.

In 1987, one of our scientists, Joe Cohen, had the fundamental scientific insight that led to the creation of the vaccine. Joe is a modest man, someone who would first and foremost insist that the team around him are also credited with the great achievement they have attained. But in Africa, he is known as Father Joe, father of the malaria vaccine. For 20 years Joe and his team have systematically overcome one scientific hurdle after another.

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Source: TIMESONLINE
Date: 26 October 2007