Science: our power to defeat COVID-19

Dear supporters,

First of all, we hope you are doing well and you are enjoying the start of spring.

Once again, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks for your generosity, since your help is truly necessary to continue our mission of supporting the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Epidemiological data demonstrate that vaccination is essential to protect individual and public health, and it remains a necessary measure to ensure community immunity and reduce the burden of disease. When enough people are vaccinated, it creates herd immunity, reducing the overall spread of disease and protecting those who cannot be immunized. The benefits are endless: reducing health care costs, supporting global health security by helping control the spread of diseases across borders, giving a rapid response to pandemics and promoting economic and educational stability as it supports long-term socioeconomic development, especially in low-income regions and developing countries.

These are the reasons why we would like to highlight the importance of the journey that Spanish immunologist Margarita del Val made to Côte d'Ivoire, where malaria kills over 10,000 people every year (including more than a thousand children under the age of five). Her mission, explained in the article titled “The Mission of Margarita del Val in Africa” published by El País on April 12, 2025, was to observe and learn from the process of immunization in a developing country, the first country in Africa to include the R21/Matrix malaria vaccine in its national immunization schedule.

As Margarita states in the article, “No matter how much you read, until you see it for yourself, it doesn’t truly become part of you. Now it has (...). I talk a lot about vaccines, about protection, about threats and infectious risks… And seeing how people are responding helps me communicate it better, (...)”.

It is her commitment to scientific knowledge and science dissemination that has led her to collaborate with Apadrina la Ciencia since its founding in 2014, and to coordinate one of the ten chapters of the experiment book Todos somos científicos, a charitable book for children and teenagers that includes a detailed photo-illustrated guide for each experiment of which over 4,000 copies have been sold. The book can be purchased on https://www.market.correos.es/product/apadrina-la-ciencia-libro-todos-somos-cientificos. All proceeds from the book are entirely allocated to social purposes related to the promotion of scientific research or to research contracts for young researchers offered through open calls by the association Apadrina la Ciencia.

Thanks to committed scientists like Margarita del Val, children all over the world can have a better future.

And with the help of people like you, we can continue our mission. Thank you so much for being part of this important journey!

Apadrina la Ciencia team