Two years ago, there were 229 million cases of malaria worldwide. One of the reasons the disease continues to be so hard to treat is that the one existing malaria vaccine is only about 30% effective (Martin, 2021). However, the current focus on developing a vaccine to fight COVID-19 has opened opportunities for teams working on more complex and deadly communicable diseases to benefit with new and improved vaccines.

A new malaria vaccine has shown high efficacy in trials. It prevents the disease 77% of the time among those receiving it. The WHO’s target efficacy for malaria vaccines is over 75%. This is the first time that this percentage has been reached (Hill, 2021).

As we are making headway in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, we could eradicate malaria, which kills over 400,000 people a year, with over half being children under five years of age.

Some parts of the world had forgotten that infectious diseases are the one element in the area of health that could pose systemic threats to mankind. COVID-19 has been an unexpected and harsh reminder of our vulnerability to communicable diseases. People in other parts of the world live permanently under the threat of the consequences of communicable diseases. The development of better and more flexible vaccination agents and plans will only benefit everyone.

Read more at the articles below:

• COVID-19 Vaccine Progress Could Mean Good News For Malaria Vaccine
• Learning from COVID-19 to accelerate malaria vaccines development
• New malaria vaccine proves highly effective – and COVID shows how quickly it could be deployed

Regina Prusinski, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CPNP-AC
FNP Director

The Graduate School always wants to hear from you! Join us on social media sites by sending us your ideas, comments, and inspirations, and while you are there, like and share our posts.