Malaria has been a health problem all over the world. Most cases and case fatalities occur in Africa and Asia. Traditionally the medicines available target to kill the parasite in blood of human beings. Other measures are directed towards vector control. The vector being the female Anopheles mosquito.
Kali Prasad Patra is working currently as a post doctoral scientist and principal investigator at the University of California, San Diego. His
research project aims at checking the development of malarial parasite inside the mosquito. The vaccine that Patra wants to make in a year with the help of $100,000 funding by BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).
The procedure will be to vaccinate human beings once. From this I guess the immunity that will develop in humans will not directly save the people
from malaria, but will infect the mosquitoes instead and thereby render mosquitoes’ internal environment not suitable for parasite propagation.
This possible mechanism of the vaccine is just my conjecture from different news articles. But anyways I am happy that people (like Kali
Prasad Patra) are working for the people who need it the most (As for centuries malaria has been a great problem for people of India and
Orissa in particular) rather than any European or American Peter J. Weina doing the job for Asian people.
If the above paragraph sounds racial then pardon me of wrong communication and pardon yourself of selective reading. My concern has
been the importance of participation in research oriented fields by indigenous people. Some time ago I made a post where an American pharmacologist gave us (doctors in India) some insight about malaria treatment. I have no problem if an American doctor is my teacher. My problem is that we Indians are lagging behind in research.
So when I find news like this it makes me very happy that we are also contributing towards the medical knowledge it makes me a lot happy
and proud.
Bio-data:
Kali Prasad Patra completed his degree from Vikram Dev College, Jeypore and Post Graduation from Berehmpur University. Then he did his Ph.D from Pondicherry University. In 1987 he joined Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) as a research assistant at Koraput and Malkangiri districts. Then he went to Pondicherry and USA in 2005 where he completed his 2 year post-doctoral training on malaria vaccine at University of Texas. Now he got BMGF funding.
Congratulations and Godspeed.
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