GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently endorsed the first malarial vaccine against mosquito-borne disease. It has been the first time the WHO has recommended the general use of a vaccine against a human parasite that kills more than 400,000 people yearly, predominantly African children.
WHO recommended "the broad use of the world's first malaria vaccine" after reviewing a pilot programme stationed since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, where more than two million doses of the RTS, S/AS01, the malarial vaccine, were given to the people. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline first made the vaccine in 1987.
Pedro Alonso, Director, WHO Global Malaria Programme, said that from a scientific perspective, RTS, S/AS01 was a massive breakthrough as the vaccine acts against Plasmodium Falciparum — one of five deadliest malarial parasite species. According to the WHO, a child dies of malaria every two minutes.
