The multinational research team hypothesised that the vaccination would herald a turning point in the struggle against the parasitic illness spread by mosquitoes, which claimed the lives of 627,000 people in 2020 alone, largely children in Africa.
The first place in the world where a malaria vaccine created by Britain’s Oxford University has gotten regulatory approval is Ghana.
According to the university, the vaccine has been licenced for use in children between the ages of 5 and 36 months, who are most at risk of dying from malaria.
It said, “It is hoped that the vaccine would assist Ghanaian and African youngsters in successfully combating malaria as a result of this first important step.”
The development and distribution of a high-efficacy vaccine that can be distributed at a sufficient scale to the nations that need it the most marked the “culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford,” according to Professor Adrian Hill, chief investigator of the R21/Matrix-M vaccine programme and director of the university’s Jenner Institute.
Oxford stated expectations that the affordable injection might be made on a big scale in a few of years when it revealed last September that a booster dosage of the novel malaria vaccine retained a high degree of protection against the illness.
The vaccine, according to the multinational research team, might be a game-changer in the fight against the parasitic illness spread by mosquitoes, which claimed the lives of 627,000 people in 2020 alone, largely African children.
A separate vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical behemoth GSK was the first to be authorised by the World Health Organization for broad use against malaria last year. It has already been given to more than a million children in Africa.
Nevertheless, studies have shown that after receiving a booster dosage, the vaccine from GSK only has a 60% efficacy rate.
In contrast, research published last year indicated that Oxford’s R21/Matrix-M vaccine was 77 percent effective at preventing malaria – the first time the WHO’s roadmap objective of 75 percent had been achieved.
AFP
