A nurse administering a vaccine to a child in Ghana in 2019
AFP via Getty Images
Ghana is the first country to approve a new highly effective malaria vaccine called R21/Matrix-M. The decision marks a milestone in her efforts to fight the disease that has claimed 619,000 lives in 2021, most of them young children.
The national Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine for children ages 3 to 5 on April 13. Most African countries, including Ghana, account for 95% of all malaria cases worldwide and her 96% of deaths. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), children under the age of five account for 80% of her deaths in the region.
Immunization with recently approved vaccines includes three primary doses followed by a booster one year later. Phase III trials of the vaccine are still underway, but an early Phase II trial conducted in 2019 found it to be 77% effective in preventing infection. The only other licensed malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, manufactured by British pharmaceutical company GSK, provides about 30% protection against severe disease.
R21/Matrix-M is the first vaccine to exceed the WHO malaria vaccine efficacy target of 75%. WHO has yet to approve it, but according to the BBC, the WHO is reviewing data from an ongoing Phase III trial of her 4,800 children. The drug’s developer, the University of Oxford, plans to report data from its trials later this year.
The drug’s manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, said in a press release that it has the capacity to produce more than 200 million doses of the drug annually.
“Malaria is a life-threatening disease that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable people in our society and remains the leading cause of death in childhood,” said Adal Poonawala of the Serum Institute of India in a press release. I am.” “The approval of R21/Matrix-M for use in Ghana is an important milestone in our efforts to combat malaria worldwide.”
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