Vaccine alone won’t eliminate malaria, but key addition to toolkit

Megan Greischar, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University, studies parasites and the transmission of infection – particularly, malaria. Her recent research looked at malaria diagnostics and the impact on vaccine efficacy.

Greischar says:

“Eliminating vector-borne diseases is incredibly difficult, even when there is a highly effective vaccine available. For example, yellow fever, a viral infection also transmitted by mosquitoes, continues to be a problem despite a very good vaccine. The current and new malaria vaccines face many hurdles, including multiple doses required to achieve protection. Vaccines will not, on their own, meet the goal of malaria elimination, except perhaps in places like the U.S. where transmission is already rare. In areas where malaria is common, evolution – both of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes and drug resistance in malaria parasites – continues to erode public health gains by making existing tools less effective. Having an additional vaccine in the toolkit is welcome news.”

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