On Wednesday, The World Health Organization (WHO) validated the RTS, S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, commonly African children.
The decision followed a survey of a pilot programme deployed since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi, where more than two million doses were distributed of the vaccine, first made by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in 1987.
After examining evidence from these countries, the WHO recommended “the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine”, the agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated.
The WHO said in a statement it was recommending the prevalent application of the vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high malaria transmission.
Much of vaccines exist against viruses and bacteria but this is the first time that the WHO has recommended the broad use of a vaccine against a human parasite.
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“From a scientific perspective, this is a massive breakthrough,” said Pedro Alonso, director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.
The vaccine acts against Plasmodium falciparum — one of five parasite species and the deadliest.
Before the newly recommended vaccine can reach African children, the next phase will be funding.
“That will be the next major step … Then we will be set up for [the] scaling of doses and decisions about where the vaccine will be most useful and how it will be deployed,” said Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s Department of Immunisation, Vaccines, and Biologicals.
According to the WHO, a child dies of malaria every two minutes.
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