malaria-vaccine

Good news as the world now has a vaccine against malaria

The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly African children.

The move follows a review of a pilot program rolled out since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in which more than two million doses of the vaccine have been administered, first launched by pharmaceutical company GSK in 1987.

After reviewing evidence from those countries, the WHO said it was “recommending the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine”, the agency’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Malaria symptoms include fever, headaches and muscle pain, then cycles of chills, fever and sweating.

Findings from the vaccine pilot showed it “significantly reduces severe malaria which is the deadly form by 30 percent,” said Kate O’Brien, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.

Read also: Tanzania: HRW warns against ban on pregnant schoolgirls

Many vaccines exist against viruses and bacteria but this was the first time that the WHO recommended for broad use a vaccine against a human parasite.

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