PRESENTED BY
PRESENTED BY
Patrick Meinhardt—Getty Images
These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

Malaria has long been a global scourge, killing some 500,000 people a year, more than half of them children under 5. But that may be about to change, thanks to the introduction of a malaria vaccine—the first vaccine ever against a parasitic infection. The shot has been in the works since 1987, at a cost of more than $750 million, mostly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GlaxoSmithKline. Dubbed Mosquirix, it was recommended for approval by the World Health Organization in October, after a field trial involving 800,000 children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. The four-dose regimen was found to cut the risk of infection by 40% and the risk of severe infection by 30%. —Jeffrey Kluger

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com.

EDIT POST