Since the malarial parasites have developed resistance to drugs, there is considerable incentive for developing vaccines.
Injections of antigens will elicit an immune response, so that when visitors, tourists, servicemen encounter the real thing, their immune systems are ready.
There are problems, however:
- Different stages of the parasite have different antigens on their surface
- Immunity produced in natural infections is only partial
Promising results have come from a synthetic vaccine based on sporozoite & merozoite coat proteins