From left: Environment principal secretary Richard Lesiyampe, Unep’s Africa representative Mounkaila Goumandakoye, UN resident co-ordinator Nardos Bekele Thomas and Planning secretary Anne Waiguru go through the Kenya National Human Development Report during its launch May 6, 2014. The study says living standards have improved in the past two years. Photo/Anthony Omuya
Gaps
in awareness as to what has been done in global efforts to control
malaria and the awesome shortcomings thereof were gleefully in evidence
when a local leading daily splashed the big news, "Tanzanian children in
malaria breakthrough," which for all intents and purposes seemes a
novelty, a world beater.
There was some factual accurancy in the hair raising finding, that six per cent of 785 children tested in a Bagamoyo district hospital and elsewhere showed that they have natural immunity that could form the basis of a new vaccine.
This finding led to US anti-malaria researchers to develop a new vaccine that is now being tested worldwide.
On that basis alone, it is clear that there wasn't quite something new in the report as the vaccine itself was being tested on children at the local level back in 2011, and neither at that time nor lately has it been said that this is a breakthrough, as it is not one until a workable vaccine, against all possible inconveniences, is put to the market.
Still this information created an impression that this is the big break that the world had been waiting for, and other lines of research put aside or simply forgotten, either by the media or researchers as well. It isn't surprising as research is pulled in all directions depending upon the specific needs, sentiments of groups.
To go a little further back, there was a major resport arising from a Malaria Vaccine Market Consultation meeting in, Rockville, Maryland State of the United States on December 10-11, 2001 whose report was a 'breakthrough' in global efforts against malaria, coordinated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The report said that malaria is a devastating disease that overwhelmingly affects poor people in developing countries." Of the estimated 2.7 million deaths worldwide caused by malaria every year, over ninety percent occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are insufficient resources to treat and control the disease.
The growing resistance of the malaria parasite to affordable drugs and of the mosquito vector to insecticides urgently calls for vaccine that can be added to the toolbox in the fight against malaria." Surely even ten years earlier ideas of a vaccine had been grasped?
The report said the need for a malaria vaccine is greater today than ever before. "However, in a market context, the question arises how will this need correlate with demand for a specific vaccine product?
The perception of a limited market, coupled with the complexity of developing a vaccine, has historically deterred sufficient investment by the private sector in malaria vaccine research and development.
The debate revolving around the gap between ‘need’ and ‘demand’ for malaria vaccines has gone on for decades with little concrete data to inform either side."
In other words it is not sufficient to have the tools, or identifying a promising blood protein, even if this was itself a breakthrough, to bring resources together and thus work to produce a vaccine, as its type, market, return are unclear.
Scientists and administrators meeting under the aegis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation resolved that "ultimately, best estimates of demand for a malaria vaccine will depend on persuasive epidemiological and economic information being in the hands of public and private sector decision-makers at the appropriate time.," which left a lot to be desired on what could ultimately be achieved.
Years later, in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) hosted a Malaria Forum in Seattle, Washington State on the western coast of the US, on October 16-18, 2007.
It was intended to bring together grantees, partners, scientists, advocates and public officials to review progress in malaria control, share challenges and successes. They were tasked with thinking creatively about how to solve the malaria problem "using what we have today and what is needed in the future."
Over 300 people participated in the Forum, the theme of which was collaboration, innovation and impact. The summary of the meeting report said that collaboration has been key to the successes countries are seeing in their implementation programs, and most countries actively scaling up malaria control are beginning to see impact.
The scale-up effort includes the key components of the existing malaria control tool box, namely artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying (IRS), and new uses of old drugs, such as intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy (IPTp).
"Implementation has advanced in the past two years largely with funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (the Global Fund), the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), and the World Bank Booster Program for Malaria Control.
New funding is or will be coming from UNITAID and charitable organizations that have taken on malaria. National Malaria Control Programs (NMCPs) are leading the development of coordinated country programs," it said.
The latter had rendered support and enabled participation of development partners towards the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership.
Collaboration was given as the foundation of malaria research and development progress, with partnerships between non-profit organisations, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academia and governments.
This collaboration had reaching record levels "and seeing major successes in the number of products in advanced development. Many difficult challenges remain, it cautioned, noting that new ones will arise in future, and hence "effective, meaningful collaboration will be essential to meeting them."
Up to that point no one who has no direct background on the issue would even be aware that there are mosquito population control methods that involve sterilising a portion of the insects, or manufacture them in large number, just spread them in mosquito ridden areas, to cut down on their numbers.
While academics could pursue the debate ad nauseam as to whether this was the best method all along and not combination therapies and treated nets (which have the potential to bring many people and companies together, create endless per diem opportunities), there is valid premise to affirm that opportunities missed in this sphere are just that, tragic.
An online analyst describes the technique with the formulation that sterile insect technology (SIT) is a method of biological control that uses sterile male insects to reduce the reproductive rate of a species of target insect.
"It is a non-polluting method of insect control, which relies on the release of sterile males into the environment in very large numbers in order to mate with the native insects that are present in the environment.
Edward F. Knipling, back in 1955, had conceived an approach to insect control in which the natural reproductive processes of insects are disrupted by the use of mutagens such as gamma radiation thus rendering the insects sterile.
The sterile males mate with fertile females that would have otherwise mated with fertile males, in which case rapidly cut malaria populations.
The writer elaborates that "if there is a sufficiently high number of sterile insects then most of the crosses are sterile, and doing this over a sufficiently long period of time, the number of native insects decreases and the ratio of sterile to normal insects increases, thus driving the native population to extinction."
SIT is currently being used for agricultural pests population control like screwworm and fruit flies. that is, in the United States where Dr Kipling lived and worked, and where the whole issue of genetic control and application is science, while in much of the rest of the world it is ideology. Resistance to genetic technology is malaria's godfather.
While scientists continue to berate on the negative effects of use of chemicals, this was an issue that Dr Kipling, who during the war, unable to finish up work on genetic control of crop pests too rapidly, led a research team of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that developed what is known as DDT, a very effective pest control chemical but which has a nefarious environmental impact by its residue on what is technically called 'unintended targets' in its spraying.
Thus after the war Dr Kipling pursued his genetic control research further, and by 1955 was making 'breakthroughs' about which we are hearing alternatives, rather than improvements, nearly 60 years later. Do we need a blood protein vaccine to stop malaria parasites growing in the body, or treated mosquitoes to kill off the species?
That is how resistance to genetics technology led to a cul de sac of researchers first around circumventing resistance against chloroquine, and it is evident that many pharmaceutical parastatals pressurised on this method to make a quick buck.
For instance, during the third phase government those around Dr Hussein Mwinyi, the minister, forced the use of sulphur based alternatives to chloroquine.
The result was a series of astonishing drawbacks and diseases induced especially by fansidar, though eventually a solid section of routine malaria sufferers got their right dosage of either metakelfin or fansidar and continue to use those combinations to this day.
That was the background to the new money spinner, artemisinin, while all use of chroloquine is banned - instead of doctors deciding what to use on which patient.
Given this sort of profiteering on the back of malaria, as well as vast misplaced nationalist sentiments that hindered effective research on malaria control just by releasing mosquitoes into the swamps, with researchers or publicists claiming that it may lead to 'new and unknown hybrids that are resistant to treatment,' a genuine fallacy, there is little to celebrate in malaria research.
Putting up huge headlines as to how Tanzanian children have antibodies from which a malaria vaccine can be developed is at best medical tourism but not the basis for a breakthrough, as such cash is not going to come from anywhere on that basis.
Not even Bill and Melinda Gates have the finances to seek all sorts of vaccine types without expectations of a big payday; artemisinin merchants will have a field day and kids will be dying too.
There was some factual accurancy in the hair raising finding, that six per cent of 785 children tested in a Bagamoyo district hospital and elsewhere showed that they have natural immunity that could form the basis of a new vaccine.
This finding led to US anti-malaria researchers to develop a new vaccine that is now being tested worldwide.
On that basis alone, it is clear that there wasn't quite something new in the report as the vaccine itself was being tested on children at the local level back in 2011, and neither at that time nor lately has it been said that this is a breakthrough, as it is not one until a workable vaccine, against all possible inconveniences, is put to the market.
Still this information created an impression that this is the big break that the world had been waiting for, and other lines of research put aside or simply forgotten, either by the media or researchers as well. It isn't surprising as research is pulled in all directions depending upon the specific needs, sentiments of groups.
To go a little further back, there was a major resport arising from a Malaria Vaccine Market Consultation meeting in, Rockville, Maryland State of the United States on December 10-11, 2001 whose report was a 'breakthrough' in global efforts against malaria, coordinated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The report said that malaria is a devastating disease that overwhelmingly affects poor people in developing countries." Of the estimated 2.7 million deaths worldwide caused by malaria every year, over ninety percent occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are insufficient resources to treat and control the disease.
The growing resistance of the malaria parasite to affordable drugs and of the mosquito vector to insecticides urgently calls for vaccine that can be added to the toolbox in the fight against malaria." Surely even ten years earlier ideas of a vaccine had been grasped?
The report said the need for a malaria vaccine is greater today than ever before. "However, in a market context, the question arises how will this need correlate with demand for a specific vaccine product?
The perception of a limited market, coupled with the complexity of developing a vaccine, has historically deterred sufficient investment by the private sector in malaria vaccine research and development.
The debate revolving around the gap between ‘need’ and ‘demand’ for malaria vaccines has gone on for decades with little concrete data to inform either side."
In other words it is not sufficient to have the tools, or identifying a promising blood protein, even if this was itself a breakthrough, to bring resources together and thus work to produce a vaccine, as its type, market, return are unclear.
Scientists and administrators meeting under the aegis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation resolved that "ultimately, best estimates of demand for a malaria vaccine will depend on persuasive epidemiological and economic information being in the hands of public and private sector decision-makers at the appropriate time.," which left a lot to be desired on what could ultimately be achieved.
Years later, in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) hosted a Malaria Forum in Seattle, Washington State on the western coast of the US, on October 16-18, 2007.
It was intended to bring together grantees, partners, scientists, advocates and public officials to review progress in malaria control, share challenges and successes. They were tasked with thinking creatively about how to solve the malaria problem "using what we have today and what is needed in the future."
Over 300 people participated in the Forum, the theme of which was collaboration, innovation and impact. The summary of the meeting report said that collaboration has been key to the successes countries are seeing in their implementation programs, and most countries actively scaling up malaria control are beginning to see impact.
The scale-up effort includes the key components of the existing malaria control tool box, namely artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying (IRS), and new uses of old drugs, such as intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy (IPTp).
"Implementation has advanced in the past two years largely with funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (the Global Fund), the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), and the World Bank Booster Program for Malaria Control.
New funding is or will be coming from UNITAID and charitable organizations that have taken on malaria. National Malaria Control Programs (NMCPs) are leading the development of coordinated country programs," it said.
The latter had rendered support and enabled participation of development partners towards the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership.
Collaboration was given as the foundation of malaria research and development progress, with partnerships between non-profit organisations, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academia and governments.
This collaboration had reaching record levels "and seeing major successes in the number of products in advanced development. Many difficult challenges remain, it cautioned, noting that new ones will arise in future, and hence "effective, meaningful collaboration will be essential to meeting them."
Up to that point no one who has no direct background on the issue would even be aware that there are mosquito population control methods that involve sterilising a portion of the insects, or manufacture them in large number, just spread them in mosquito ridden areas, to cut down on their numbers.
While academics could pursue the debate ad nauseam as to whether this was the best method all along and not combination therapies and treated nets (which have the potential to bring many people and companies together, create endless per diem opportunities), there is valid premise to affirm that opportunities missed in this sphere are just that, tragic.
An online analyst describes the technique with the formulation that sterile insect technology (SIT) is a method of biological control that uses sterile male insects to reduce the reproductive rate of a species of target insect.
"It is a non-polluting method of insect control, which relies on the release of sterile males into the environment in very large numbers in order to mate with the native insects that are present in the environment.
Edward F. Knipling, back in 1955, had conceived an approach to insect control in which the natural reproductive processes of insects are disrupted by the use of mutagens such as gamma radiation thus rendering the insects sterile.
The sterile males mate with fertile females that would have otherwise mated with fertile males, in which case rapidly cut malaria populations.
The writer elaborates that "if there is a sufficiently high number of sterile insects then most of the crosses are sterile, and doing this over a sufficiently long period of time, the number of native insects decreases and the ratio of sterile to normal insects increases, thus driving the native population to extinction."
SIT is currently being used for agricultural pests population control like screwworm and fruit flies. that is, in the United States where Dr Kipling lived and worked, and where the whole issue of genetic control and application is science, while in much of the rest of the world it is ideology. Resistance to genetic technology is malaria's godfather.
While scientists continue to berate on the negative effects of use of chemicals, this was an issue that Dr Kipling, who during the war, unable to finish up work on genetic control of crop pests too rapidly, led a research team of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that developed what is known as DDT, a very effective pest control chemical but which has a nefarious environmental impact by its residue on what is technically called 'unintended targets' in its spraying.
Thus after the war Dr Kipling pursued his genetic control research further, and by 1955 was making 'breakthroughs' about which we are hearing alternatives, rather than improvements, nearly 60 years later. Do we need a blood protein vaccine to stop malaria parasites growing in the body, or treated mosquitoes to kill off the species?
That is how resistance to genetics technology led to a cul de sac of researchers first around circumventing resistance against chloroquine, and it is evident that many pharmaceutical parastatals pressurised on this method to make a quick buck.
For instance, during the third phase government those around Dr Hussein Mwinyi, the minister, forced the use of sulphur based alternatives to chloroquine.
The result was a series of astonishing drawbacks and diseases induced especially by fansidar, though eventually a solid section of routine malaria sufferers got their right dosage of either metakelfin or fansidar and continue to use those combinations to this day.
That was the background to the new money spinner, artemisinin, while all use of chroloquine is banned - instead of doctors deciding what to use on which patient.
Given this sort of profiteering on the back of malaria, as well as vast misplaced nationalist sentiments that hindered effective research on malaria control just by releasing mosquitoes into the swamps, with researchers or publicists claiming that it may lead to 'new and unknown hybrids that are resistant to treatment,' a genuine fallacy, there is little to celebrate in malaria research.
Putting up huge headlines as to how Tanzanian children have antibodies from which a malaria vaccine can be developed is at best medical tourism but not the basis for a breakthrough, as such cash is not going to come from anywhere on that basis.
Not even Bill and Melinda Gates have the finances to seek all sorts of vaccine types without expectations of a big payday; artemisinin merchants will have a field day and kids will be dying too.
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