Malaria Vaccine Efficacy Rate: WHO’s Basis in Approving Protection Against the Disease in African Children

The World Health Organization recommended yesterday RTS,S, or Mosquirix, the only brand approved for its malaria vaccine efficacy rate.

A Reuters report said the only authorized vaccine against malaria needs to be widely provided to African children, possibly marking a major advance for protection against diseases that kills hundreds of thousands of individuals each year.

Since 2019, more than two million doses of the vaccine, developed by GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugmaker, have been administered to infants in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, in an extensive preliminary program the WHO coordinated.

Most of the kids whom malaria has killed are aged below five years old. That particular program followed ten years of clinical trials in seven countries of Africa.

The Mosquirix Vaccine

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said, "this is a vaccine developed by African scientists in Africa," and they are very proud.

He added, using the vaccine on top of the existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives year after year, referring to anti-malaria initiatives such as bed nets and spraying to eliminate mosquitoes that spread the disease.

One of the ingredients in the Mosquirix vaccine, as described in the European Medicines Agency site, is sourced from an unusual evergreen native to Chile, also identified as a Quillay tree. As this Reuters report specified yesterday, these trees' long-term supply is in question.

Malaria is far more fatal compared to COVID-19 in Africa. In 2019, it killed more than 380,000 people, according to an estimate made by the WHO, compared with over 200,000 verified in COVID-19 mortalities in the last 18 months.

Vaccine's Efficacy Rate

According to the WHO, 94 percent of malaria occurrences and deaths occur in Africa, a continent with a 1.3 billion population.

The health agency added the preventable disease is brought by parasites transferred to humans by bites of infected mosquitoes. Symptoms of this disease include vomiting, fatigue, and fever.

The efficacy of the vaccine at preempting severe malaria cases in children is just roughly 30 percent, although it is the only approved vaccine.

It was approved in 2015 by the European Union's drug regulator saying, its benefits prevailed over its risks. According to Ashley Birkett, who heads the global malaria vaccine project at non-profit global health organization, Path, which has financially backed development of the vaccine with GSK, and the three-country pilot, this is how malaria is combated layering imperfect mechanisms on top of each other.

Another Malaria Vaccine

One more vaccine against Malaria known as R21/Matrix-Mthat was formulated by scientists at Britain's University of Oxford, exhibited up to 77-percent efficacy in year-long research involving 450 children in Burkina Faso, explained the researchers earlier this year. It is still in the trial phases.

GSK's chief global health officer Thomas Breuer said in a statement; this long-awaited landmark decision can reinvigorate the battle against malaria in the region at a time when growth and advancement on malaria control have slowed down.

Shares of the GSK held steady in New York after the announcement, which came following the closing of trading in its London-listed shares.

Related information is shown on Ranjan Kumar Patel's YouTube video below:

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