The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WHO says African kids need malaria vaccine
Breakthrough shot could curb spread, health officials say.
LONDON — The world’s first malaria vaccine should be given to children across Africa, the World Health Organization recommended Wednesday, a move that officials hope will spur stalled efforts to curb the spread of the parasitic disease.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it “a historic moment” after a meeting in which two of the U.N. health agency’s expert advisory groups endorsed using the vaccine.
“Today’s recommendation offers a glimmer of hope for the continent, which shoulders the heaviest burden of the disease, and we expect many more African children to be protected from malaria and grow into healthy adults,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’S Africa director.
WHO said its decision was based largely on results from ongoing research in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that tracked more than 800,000 children who have received the vaccine since 2019.
The malaria vaccine known as Mosquirix was developed by Glaxosmithkline in 1987. While it’s the first to be authorized, it does have challenges: The vaccine is only about 30% effective; it requires up to four doses; and its protection fades after several months.
Still, given the extremely high burden of malaria in Africa — where the majority of the world’s more than 200 million cases a year and 400,000 deaths a year occur — scientists say the vaccine still could have a major impact.
“This is a huge step forward,” said Julian Rayner, director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, who was not part of the WHO decision. “It’s an imperfect vaccine, but it will still stop hundreds of thousands of children from dying.”
Rayner said the vaccine’s impact on the spread of the mosquito-borne disease was still unclear, but pointed to coronavirus vaccines as an encouraging example.
“The last two years have given us a very nuanced understanding of how important vaccines are in saving lives and reducing hospitalizations, even if they don’t directly reduce transmission,” he said.
Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, chair of the WHO vaccine group that made the recommendation, said designing a shot against malaria was particularly difficult because it is a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes.
“We’re confronted with extraordinarily complex organisms,” he said. “We are not yet in reach of a highly efficacious vaccine, but what we have now is a vaccine that can be deployed and that is safe.”
WHO said side effects were rare, but sometimes included a fever that could result in temporary convulsions.
Sian Clarke, co-director of the Malaria Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine would be a useful addition to other tools against the disease that might have exhausted their utility after decades of use, such as bed nets and insecticides.
“In some countries where it gets really hot, children just sleep outside, so they can’t be protected by a bed net,” Clarke said. “So obviously if they’ve been vaccinated, they will still be protected.”
Clarke added that in the last few years, little significant progress has been made against malaria.
“If we’re going to decrease the disease burden now, we need something else,” she said.