The first malaria vaccine might be made available to billions of people after senior WHO officials gave it the green light.
Mosquirix could potentially save tens of thousands of lives each year, according to experts on the WHO’s advisory boards for immunization and malaria.
The WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that he began his career as a malaria researcher and “longed for the day when we would have an effective vaccine against this old and horrible disease.”
“Today is that day,” he stated—a momentous occasion. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the widespread use of the world’s first malaria vaccine.
This long-awaited malaria vaccine is a watershed moment in science, pediatric health, and malaria control. Using this vaccine in conjunction with currently available techniques to control malaria could result in the annual saving of tens of thousands of young lives.”
The vaccine is now likely to receive approval from the World Health Organization. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which ensures that low-income nations have access to life-saving vaccines, will subsequently evaluate financing for millions of doses.
Meanwhile, Gavi, Unitaid, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria have hailed the WHO recommendation, noting that it “marks a historic achievement in our fight against malaria.”
The Strategic Advisory Group of Immunization Experts and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group decided to support widespread deployment following a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi.
Since 2019, more than 800,000 children in the three nations have received at least one dose of the vaccine as part of their routine childhood vaccination schedule.
“Today’s recommendation gives a glimpse of optimism for the continent,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa, said.
“We anticipate that a greater number of African children will be protected against malaria and will develop into healthy, productive adults.”
The jab was shown to prevent 30{7d6bb1f761e691f027164c9fe6d1ebbc4659a250013ce39dc45a15ede39dbac5} of severe malaria cases in real-world settings, even in places with high adoption of other treatments, such as insecticide-treated bed nets.
Additionally, it proved to be safe, receiving widespread acceptance from families.
Malaria claimed 409,000 lives in 2019, the majority of which occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Every two minutes, a youngster dies of the sickness.
Mosquirix is active against Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito and is the most lethal of all malaria parasites.
Developing a vaccine has been extremely difficult because of the parasite’s complexity, which dwarfs a virus or bacteria.
The vaccine primes the immune system to combat the malaria parasite immediately after being delivered into the bloodstream via a mosquito bite.
It prevents the parasite from maturing and multiplying in liver cells, which would ordinarily cause potentially fatal illness.
Although the vaccine is less efficient than other diseases, malaria takes so many lives that the WHO expects it will still avert tens of thousands of deaths each year.
Professor Dyann Wirth, leader of the WHO Malaria Policy Advisory Group, stated, “This is the first vaccination for a human parasite and proves that a vaccine for this difficult infection is doable.”
“With continual threats to our existing instruments, such as drug-resistant parasites and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, innovation is required not only to develop new tools but also to better tune our present tools for optimal impact.
“The malaria parasite is a difficult adversary, and while this latest progress is encouraging, significant battles remain.”
Until recently, bed nets were the primary method of malaria prevention, with mortality reducing by 60{7d6bb1f761e691f027164c9fe6d1ebbc4659a250013ce39dc45a15ede39dbac5} in the first 15 years of this century as they became widely distributed.
However, progress has halted, with less than half of all African families possessing sufficient nets to cover the entire family.
The vaccine’s pilot research found that it was administered to two-thirds of youngsters without the use of a net, providing an additional layer of protection.
More efficient vaccinations are being developed, one of which is being developed by the same Oxford University team that developed the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine.
According to a trial revealed earlier this year, it averted 77 percent of instances, making it even more effective than the Mosquirix shot.
A phase three study with a bigger sample size of 5,000 youngsters is now being prepared.
