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New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report in Reuters, scientists are celebrating the end of a clinical trial which found a malaria vaccine reduces infection risk by half in children. From the article: 'While scientists say it is no "silver bullet" and will not end the mosquito-borne infection on its own, it is being hailed as a crucial weapon in the fight against malaria and one that could speed the path to eventual worldwide eradication. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work at the point when the parasite enters the human bloodstream after a mosquito bite. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. ... Cohen said that if all goes to plan, RTS,S could be licensed and rolled out by 2015.'"
Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Sent from my CR-48
Malaria kills about 2414 people per day. But the number one cause of death for women in places like Lagos and Cairo is blood loss during childbirth. The West's invention of a malaria vaccine will be hugely important. But in the meantime, during Cohen's 24 years of working on the vaccines, the west has criminalized the sale of surplus property from USA hospitals to emerging markets. Shredding our own surplus property causes our health care costs to go up, and forces emerging markets to buy brand new equipment they cannot afford, which takes money they need - to buy malaria vaccines. They need computers and need basic things like hospital beds. Here is a link to a story which ran yesterday, that "medical waste" was illegally shipped to Brazil. Had the story translated... it was uniforms and beds. The message is that Western hospitals cannot share surplus property - computers, blood gas analyzers, or beds - with emerging markets. By coincidence, 24 years ago I lived in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, and had to dig a grave for a colleagues two year old son. I kept links there and have been trying to help the hospitals during the same 24 years. During the past 24 years, while Cohen perfected his vaccine, donations of surplus property to hospitals in Africa has been criminalized. Sometimes simple things, like donating hospital beds, can save as many people over the period as a new vaccine. The system is sick. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/headline-medical-waste-exported-to.html
Gently reply
Some times the pathetic attitude of people here really disappoints me.
Even with his billions he can't lift the world out of recession, he has the same hamstring everyone does, government. How do you propose solving government induced poverty? Spend his billions trying to overthrow petty tyrants? How do you expect him to sort out which start ups have a possibility at success let alone are not scams or will simply succumb to the corrupt governments of the countries they are in?
You seem to ascribe a lot of guilt to one man who actually is trying do good. Did you ever consider that he has evaluated his options and is taking the choice that provides the best bang for the buck?
What are you doing, please don't say that since you don't have X amount of money you cannot help.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
One of the Gates Foundation biggest health initiatives is family planning.
Seriously, they get it. Enough that they are drawing the ire of certain other groups, for what it's worth.
Basically, he spends money now on curing human SYMPTOMS, while ignoring the main issue that really needs to worked on: poverty.
You would make a really shitty triage doctor. When a patient is laying on the gurney with a gunshot wound, you don't throw your hands up and say "Well, until I can treat the underlying problem of gang violence that got him here, fuck it." Helping end disease in Africa will mean a major improvement in lives there. Would it be nice to ALSO end poverty? You betcha. But when you have limited resources, you don't START with the hardest and most intractable problems, you start out with the smaller problems that you can actually SOLVE with those limited resources.
Even a Bill Gates, with his vast individual wealth, couldn't even begin to deal with the issue of poverty in Africa. That would take a coalition of dozens (if not hundreds) of governments willing to pool their resources and work together. And even then it would be a HUGE challenge.
What's REALLY sad that people on /. can't look past their mindless hatred of Bill Gates to acknowledge the real good he's doing in Africa. The bizarre thing is that some of these same people are the ones who cried like their daddy had died when Steve Jobs died--a man who lined his own pockets with billions while never doing ANYTHING to help the sick and impoverished. Not one fucking THING have you or your idol done for the poor in Africa, yet all you can do is criticize Bill Gates, one of the few who is actually getting off his ass and doing something to help.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cured, then another disease will step right up there because more ppl will occupy the same space, but with the same amount of money to solve issues. Actually less overall as well as less per person. Once it is realized by gates that he screwed up, he will not want to solve the next symptom..
I don't think you understand the drain on resources that malaria is. While many do die from malaria, most do not. Most are just chronically sick, and unless you are going to advocate shooting them in the head, these current chronically sick people are a much bigger drain on the entire social structure than the increased costs associated with fewer deaths due to malaria.
Have a read:
http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/363/RBMInfosheet_10.htm
"Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than in countries without malaria. Economists believe that malaria is responsible for a ‘growth penalty' of up to 1.3% per year in some African countries. When compounded over the years, this penalty leads to substantial differences in GDP between countries with and without malaria and severely restrains the economic growth of the entire region.
The direct costs of malaria include a combination of personal and public expenditures on both prevention and treatment of the disease. Personal expenditures include individual or family spending on insecticide treated mosquito nets (ITNs), doctors' fees, anti-malarial drugs, transport to health facilities, support for the patient and sometimes an accompanying family member during hospital stays. Public expenditures include spending by government on maintaining health facilities and health care infrastructure, publicly managed vector control, education and research. In some countries with a heavy malaria burden, the disease may account for as much as 40% of public health expenditure, 30-50% of inpatient admissions, and up to 50% of outpatient visits.
The indirect costs of malaria include lost productivity or income associated with illness or death. This might be expressed as the cost of lost workdays or absenteeism from formal employment and the value of unpaid work done in the home by both men and women. In the case of death, the indirect cost includes the discounted future lifetime earnings of those who die.
Malaria has a greater impact on Africa's human resources than simple lost earnings. Although difficult to express in dollar terms, another indirect cost of malaria is the human pain and suffering caused by the disease. Malaria also hampers children's schooling and social development through both absenteeism and permanent neurological and other damage associated with severe episodes of the disease.
The simple presence of malaria in a community or country also hampers individual and national prosperity due to its influence on social and economic decisions. The risk of contracting malaria in endemic areas can deter investment, both internal and external and affect individual and household decision making in many ways that have a negative impact on economic productivity and growth."