In 2000 malaria killed 47 people per 100,000 of those at risk. In 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, that had dropped to 19—a fall of 60%. Even so, malaria kills 430,000 people each year. Some 70% of those who succumb are children under five.

Although the deployment of RTS,S in 2018—in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi—will only be a pilot scheme intended to test the vaccine’s effectiveness in the rough and tumble of African clinical life, it will be a big one.

In 2018, this infanticidal bias may begin to change. The coming year will see the widespread testing of the first effective vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most deadly type of malaria. The vaccine, called RTS,S, will be given exclusively to children. It has been under development since 2001 by a collaboration between Glaxo SmithKline, a British drug company, and PATH, an American global-health charity.

The Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme, as it is known, will recruit 360,000 children, aged between five months and 17 months, to receive a series of four doses of RTS,S. The programme will be run by the World Health Organisation and the bills paid by three transnational health initiatives, Gavi, the Global Fund and Unitaid.

Read the full article on a malaria vaccine by Geoffrey Carr at The Economist