The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday (October 6, 2021) the only approved vaccine against malaria should be widely given to African children, potentially marking a major advance against a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually.
The WHO recommendation is for RTS,S – or Mosquirix – a vaccine developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.
Since 2019, 2.3 million doses of Mosquirix have been administered to infants in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a large-scale pilot programme coordinated by the WHO. The majority of those whom the disease kills are under age five.
That programme followed a decade of clinical trials in seven African countries.
“This is a vaccine developed in Africa by African scientists and we`re very proud,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Using this vaccine in addition to existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year,” he added, referring to anti-malaria measures like bed nets and spraying to kill mosquitoes that transmit the disease.
