Vaccines: it's not just a lack of money

Article in SFGate by a Clinton administration official spouts the usual mantra thatwe don't have malaria vaccine or TB vaccine or HIV vaccine because the evil capitalists won't make vaccines for poor people...

Actually, the problem is not money (lack of money and lack of an infrastructure to give vaccines does allow Measles and polio to flourish, for example) but the problem is with the nature of the diseases themselves

Malaria vaccine is difficult because it is caused by a protozoa (one cell animal) not a bacteria or virus. LINK2

HIV is another problem. Most viral vaccines use an "attenuated" virus to give a mild form of the disease to protect from the fullblown form. Of course, you could inject the coating of the virus (dead vaccine) but HIV antigens mutate all the time..

As for TB, there is a vaccine that gives partial immunity that's been around for years: BCG vaccine. It prevents milliary TB, which is where TB spreads all thru the body because you have no immunity. BCG makes your immune cells recognize TB, so when you are exposed, you only get chronic tb...and there is a "new" vaccine that may or may not be better.

But the dirty little secret of all of these things is that basic hygiene, behavioral changes, good diet, and sanitation would cut down the death rate.

TB became less common as nutrition improved.
Malaria stops when you eliminate open ditches and spray pools of water.
HIV decreases with improved genital hygiene and by improving the status of women, so that women have more choices to stay alive than becoming "sex workers", and societies frown on promiscuity.

So let's encourage money for vaccines. But there is no quick fix when you give a kid a 3 dollar vaccine shot, and then he dies from diarrhea because there is no clean water supply...