WHO approves of a vaccine for malaria in African children.  

 

WHO has recommended the first malaria vaccine for children in Africa on October 6th. This is a breakthrough as described by the United Nations a ‘historic moment’.

The WHO has recommended the use of the malaria vaccine RTS,S, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, which is the first ever malaria vaccine to be recommended by the World Health Organisation.

The study is based on two years of pilot testing in three sub-Saharan African countries with high rates of malaria, namely Malawi, Kenya, and Ghana.

Following several careful evaluation and extensive discussion, the WHO came to the conclusion that the vaccine should be recommended for use in children living in areas with moderate to high risk of malaria.

Each year, malaria kills hundreds of thousands of children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Scientists, vaccine manufacturers, policymakers, and advocates have worked together to develop a vaccine that made it through the clinical trials and received both regulatory approval and a recommendation from the World Health Organisation.

An estimated 30% of fatal malaria cases are prevented by this vaccine. In Malawi, Kenya, and Ghana, the malaria vaccine implementation program has shown excellent vaccine uptake and a good safety profile since 2019. Around 800,000 children have received the vaccine in these three countries.

Malaria is a disease that targets the poorest of the poor. The greatest risk of disease comes from places where people lack access to basic health care. Inadequate water management provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread malaria.

The vaccine will be able to reach all children in areas with a moderate to high risk of malaria, according to the report of World Health Organisation. This will save lives from the deadly parasite, especially among children who do not have easy access to medical care.

When it comes to an infection as common as malaria, prevention is always more cost-effective than treatment. Malaria prevention drugs are sometimes utilised, but they must be taken often, which is both costly and inconvenient. The malaria parasites may evolve resistance to the treatments as the use of prevention drugs increase.

There are many variants of different proteins in malaria, which made it a huge challenge for WHO to develop a vaccine that covers all of those protein variants.