Giving Compass' Take:

• Dr. Nana Minkah brings his first-hand perspective at seeing the awful effects of malaria from growing up in Sub-Sahara Africa, and his understanding of how important it is to develop a much-needed vaccine. 

• Vaccines will hopefully lead to significant gains in global health. What other measures can be taken to stop this deadly disease?

• Here's how to renew efforts in malaria disease fighting. 

Growing up in Ghana, a sub-Saharan country on the west coast of Africa, Dr. Nana Minkah, a scientist at the Kappe Lab, endured the unenviable “rite of passage” contracting malaria multiple times as a child.

While he doesn’t remember the early years when the associated high fever caused hallucinations, he has distinct memories of later bouts when he was bedridden for more than a week with pain and chills so bad his body visibly shivered.

The multiple malaria infections Minkah endured in his youth is common to those living in sub-Saharan Africa where the mosquito-transmitted parasitic infection is one of the deadliest diseases in human history. Despite tremendous attempts to rid the world of the malaria pathogens, it continues to sicken hundreds of millions and kills nearly half a million people each year. Malaria’s biggest toll is on children and pregnant women in developing countries

Read the full article about the fight against malaria by Staci Barsness and Elizabeth Dimarco at Seattle Children's Hospital Research Center.