A few articles caught the eye in Malaria World this week. Firstly, the US FDA has placed a clinical hold on COVID vaccine maker, BioNTech’s early-to-mid stage trial of an experimental RNA malaria vaccine. Curiously, no reason was given for the hold on the Phase I/IIa study testing BNT165e in nearly 180 healthy and malaria-naïve adults to primarily assess the safety and tolerability of the experimental shot, while also looking for signs of efficacy and immunogenicity.
Secondly, ‘Subnational tailoring of malaria interventions to prioritize the malaria response in Guinea’ by Diallo et al examined attitudes only to chemical interventions – Indoor Residual Spraying, IG2 insecticide treated bed nets (see picture), seasonal malaria chemoprevention, perennial malaria chemoprevention (also known as intermittent preventive treatment for infants) and RTS,S vaccine. Clearly, better food or water are not considered as potential factors at reducing malaria.
And finally this is spelt out very clearly in ‘Survey on knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of malaria prevention and control among Chinese expatriates in South Sudan’ by Su et al. In the survey of Chinese workers in South Sudan 99.0% ‘know’ that female Anopheles mosquito bites can transmit malaria. However, the authors report that ‘some respondents (21.64%) erroneously believe that contaminated food and water sources can also transmit malaria’.
Later, they state that ‘53.23% of respondents mistakenly believed that attention to food and drinking water hygiene could prevent malaria’. I consider it very promising that a majority of Chinese workers (the vast majority in South Sudan for < 1year) realise that attention to food and water could prevent malaria, despite the attitude of the malaria researchers. The authors, without any cited evidence, dismiss the link to food and water with the words ‘erroneously’ and ‘mistakenly’.
To again quote Upton Sinclair “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” And so long as malaria research is flooded with funding from producers of chemical solutions to poison mosquitos and people, the nutrition and water hygiene connection will be suppressed in peer reviewed research.