Malaria vaccine beckons

A “game-changing” malaria vaccine developed by British researchers offers hope of saving the lives of millions of children in Africa after trial results beat all expectations.

The jab, developed by the Brentford-based drugmaker GSK, was found to reduce the rate of severe malaria by 70 per cent in a study involving nearly 6000 children aged between five and 17 months in Burkina Faso and Mali.

Scientists are confident that the World Health Organisation will recommend the vaccine when an expert panel meets in October. This would make it the first malaria vaccine to reach the market.

At present children in Burkina Faso and Mali are given courses of antimalarial medicines during the rainy season.

The trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that combining the vaccine with this treatment led to a 70 per cent reduction in hospital admissions for severe malaria and deaths, compared with the course of medicines alone.

More than 150,000 children under five die of the disease each year in Africa’s worst-hit regions. Nearly 40 million could soon be given the jab.

GSK has not said how much the vaccine will cost, but Thomas Breuer, its chief global health officer, added that it had not been developed to make large profits but “to contribute to global health”.