The Malaria Vaccine That Just Rolled Out Has a Surprise Benefit for Kids

The rollout of malaria vaccines in Africa – the world's first routine immunization program against this mosquito-borne disease – has raised excitement for a surprising reason. The vaccine reduces all kinds of deaths among children, not just malaria deaths – by 13%.

Some of these averted deaths will be directly related to malaria. But the unexpected development is that the vaccine seems to reduce deaths where malaria is only a contributing factor, exacerbating other diseases but not killing the patient itself, like salmonella. Decreasing non-malaria deaths is not the only spillover benefit of the vaccine. Read more from NPR here.