Malaria will be wiped out ‘within a decade’
Oxford scientist behind new cheap and effective jab says disease could be eradicated by mid-2030s
MALARIA could be wiped out within a decade, an Oxford scientist has said.
Prof Adrian Hill, a vaccine expert, has helped create a cheap and effective vaccine that could be a game-changer in the fight against the mosquito-borne disease.
The disease claims more than 600,000 lives each year and two British jabs have been shown to prevent infection and led to hope that the parasitic condition could soon be eradicated.
Prof Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, said the new jabs, as well as traditional preventative tools like mosquito nets and antimalarial drugs, could make the next decade the last in which malaria is a concern.
“Eradication of malaria could be feasible in 10 years,” he said at the AAAS annual conference in Denver, Colorado.
“I think it’s probably going to be in the mid-2030s, providing the funding is provided. A lot is happening, it’s really exciting. I’ve been in this field for 35 years and it’s never been like this before.
“Last weekend I was in the Gambia. I trained there, I used to be on call in the evenings. During the worst season of malaria, you’d have two or three kids to a bed.
“That has gone way down. In my lifetime a lot of problems [have been] solved in one small part of one country – that’s just an illustration of what you could do.”
The first successful vaccine, drug company GSK’s RTS,S jab, also known as Mosquirix, was given approval for use by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in July 2022, followed by Oxford University’s R21 vaccine in December 2023.
The world’s first routine malaria vaccinations took place in Cameroon last month, with ambitions to reach 6.6 million children in 20 African countries by 2025. Oxford’s £3-a-dose jab is expected to be cheaper and easier to mass produce than GSK’s option because it will be made at the Serum Institute of India, which helped produce the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine cheaply.
‘Eradication is probably going to be in the mid-2030s, providing the funding is provided’