Nigeria: Foundation starts funding scientists to develop anti-malaria vaccine

The Prince Ned Nwoko Foundation has commenced funding a group of scientists and researchers to develop anti-malaria vaccine. The objective is to enhance the eradication of malaria in Africa.

The Chairman of the Foundation, Ned Nwoko said in Nigeria's capital, Abuja that creating a vaccine with the effectiveness of boosting immunity against malaria is one of the strategies to mitigate the scourge. According to him, the group of scientists and advisers had been put together already with a specific instruction to discover a vaccine for malaria.

"There are vaccines for many other ailments, from chickenpox to smallpox, polio, name them; so why not malaria? Everyone seems to have accepted that malaria is part of us, but it doesn't have to be, so we need to get vaccine research going, which we are doing now," Ned Nwoko opined. He added that just like any project that has to succeed requires a long and short-term strategy.

"We are not going to fumigate Africa at once, we are going to fumigate country by country, once the country keys into it, we take it up from there and do what has to be done. Fumigation is just one aspect of it, don't forget that sanitation is so important, the cleaning up of the environment, we must clean up our environment, stagnant waters, dirt everywhere, the sewage systems, gutters, refuse dumps," he also said.

"We have come of age in Nigeria where our environment should be clean anyway, why must we continue living in dirty environments, why must we continue living in slums," he further added.