(16 Oct 1998) English/Nat
VOICE-OVER:
This is how it starts.
And this is how it can end - a desperately ill child at death's door.
This toddler is one of maybe 400-=million people worldwide stricken with malaria.
Up to 2 million of them will die - and that's not to mention the economic costs of malaria.
They are horrendous - costs that range from trying to care for 400 million sick people to the staggering loss of productivity that's involved.
But help may be at hand thanks to a D-N-A vaccine developed by the U-S navy.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
The major reason is that D-N-A vaccines are really easy to make. So that any molecular biologist and that is the scientist who is a genetic engineer, anywhere in the world with a reasonable laboratory can make a D-N-A vaccine and can actually make the D-N-A vaccine relatively rapidly."
SUPERCAPTION: Dr Stephen Hoffman, U-S Navy scientist
The vaccine works by raising the immune defences - so-called T-cells - above a critical threshold so they are a match for the parasite.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"What we do with a D-N-A vaccine is administer the D-N-A. It goes into the recipient cells, the foreign material is produced there. And that is the most efficient way we know of eliciting this killer T-cell response"
SUPERCAPTION: Dr Stephen Hoffman, U-S Navy scientist
Let's hope it's 'bye bye malaria'.
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