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By Maggie Fick and Aaron Ross
NAIROBI/DAKAR, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The World Health
Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday 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 aged under 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. "This vaccine is a gift to the world but its value
will be felt most in Africa."
Malaria is far more deadly than COVID-19 in Africa. It
killed 386,000 Africans in 2019, according to a WHO estimate,
compared with 212,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in the past
18 months.
The WHO says 94% of malaria cases and deaths occur in
Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people. The preventable
disease is caused by parasites transmitted to people by the
bites of infected mosquitoes; symptoms include fever, vomiting
and fatigue.
The Mosquirix recommendation was jointly announced in Geneva
by the WHO's top advisory bodies for malaria and immunization,
the Malaria Policy Advisory Group and the Strategic Advisory
Group of Experts on Immunisation.
The vaccine's effectiveness at preventing severe cases of
malaria in children is only around 30%, but it is the only
approved vaccine. The European Union's drugs regulator approved
it in 2015, saying its benefits outweighed the risks.
In late 2015, the WHO expert panels called for a pilot
programme in three to five African countries to inform a future
decision about widespread use of the vaccine.
On Wednesday, nearly six years later and two years after the
start of the pilots, the WHO panels recommended the vaccine be
rolled out for children across African nations where malaria is
endemic, alongside the other authorized means of preventing
malaria such as bednets and spraying.
In 2019, the WHO said the fight against malaria had stalled.
But it said on Wednesday that using the vaccine as an additional
tool against the disease could save tens of thousands of lives
each year.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick and Aaron Ross; Editing by Katharine
Houreld and Mark Potter)
