Lisnawati

Malaria: The beginning of the end? You wait for years for a breakthrough in the battle against malaria, and then two come along in two weeks. But the advance announced yesterday by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge is potentially far more significant than last month's news of an experimental vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline (and part-funded by Bill Gates), which showed partial success in early clinical trials. Scientists involved in those trials emphasised that the vaccine would only be able to contribute to the control of malaria. The Cambridge scientists' discovery offers hope of something far more thrilling: the complete global eradication of the disease. That tantalising goal is significantly closer, thanks to the discovery of the critical component of human red blood cells that appears to be vital for the malaria parasite to complete its lifecycle within the human body. In effect, the deadly parasite's "Achilles heel" has be