Exciting malaria vaccine approved by WHO
(Staff) A VACCINE that has proven safe and cost-effective against malaria has been approved by the World Health Organization.
Malaria kills about 500,000 people a year, mostly babies and young children and nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
The vaccine – called RTS,S or Mosquirix – has proven effective in pilot immunisation programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Now the WHO says the vaccine should be rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa where it could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.
Malaria is a parasite that invades and destroys blood cells in order to reproduce, and it is spread by the bite of blood-sucking mosquitoes.
Children are most at risk of dying from malaria as they have not had a chance to build up immunity. It takes years of being repeatedly infected to build up immunity and even this only reduces the chances of becoming severely ill.
Drugs to kill the parasite, bed-nets to prevent bites and insecticides to kill the mosquito have all helped reduce malaria. Yet in 2019 more than 260,000 African children still died from the disease.
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, even in those regions where people sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets, children have on average of six malaria episodes a year. Even when the disease is not fatal, the repeated assault on their bodies can permanently damage the immune system, leaving them vulnerable to other pathogens.
Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano piloted the vaccine in Ghana to assess whether mass vaccination was feasible and effective. Constantly catching malaria as a child and then missing weeks of school inspired him to become a doctor.
“It is quite an exciting moment for us. With large-scale vaccination I believe the malaria toll will be reduced to the barest minimum,” he said.
The vaccine was developed in Africa by African scientists. Mosquirix targets the malaria parasite that is most deadly and most common in Africa: Plasmodium falciparum. The parasite is far more insidious and sophisticated than the virus that causes Covid.
Parasites are much more complex than both viruses and bacteria. Mosquirix is the first vaccine developed against any parasitic disease. This is another reason the vaccine is so exciting.
The vaccine is considered moderately effective. Trials, reported in 2015, showed it could prevent around four in 10 cases of malaria, three in 10 severe cases and lead to the number of children needing blood transfusions falling by a third.
Mosquirix can be easily distributed by including it in routine immunizations for children under the age of two.
A recent trial of Mosquirix in combination with preventative drugs given to children during high transmission seasons found that the dual approach was much more effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death than either method alone.
It is estimated that each year the new vaccine could prevent 5.4 million cases of malaria and 23,000 deaths in children younger than five.
Mosquirix has been developed by the pharmaceutical giant GSK which has pledged to supply the doses at the manufacturing cost plus 5 per cent. If Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, approves the vaccine as a worthwhile investment, the organization will purchase the vaccine for countries that request it. TAP –BBC, Globe and Mail
