Ghana, Kenya, Malawi set to pilot world’s first malaria vaccine

Three African countries are set to test the world’s first malaria vaccine, the World Health Organization announced Monday. Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will begin piloting the injectable vaccine next year with hundreds of thousands of young children, who have been at highest risk of death.

The vaccine, which has partial effectiveness, has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives if used with existing measures, the WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said in a statement.
Malaria remains one of the world’s most stubborn health challenges, infecting more than 200 million people every year and killing about half a million, most of them children in Africa. Bed netting and insecticides are the chief protection.

Sub-Saharan Africa is hardest hit by the disease, with about 90 percent of the world’s cases in 2015. Malaria spreads when a mosquito bites someone already infected, sucks up blood and parasites, and then bites another person.

The vaccine will be tested on children 5 to 17 months old to see whether its protective effects shown so far in clinical trials can hold up under real-life conditions. At least 120,000 children in each of the 3 countries will receive the vaccine, which has taken decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.

Kenya, Ghana and Malawi will run the vaccine pilot because all have strong prevention and vaccination programs but continue to have high numbers of malaria cases. The countries will deliver the vaccine through their existing vaccination programs.

It is hoped that malaria will be eliminated globally by 2040 despite increasing resistance problems to both drugs and insecticides used to kill mosquitoes.

Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East also have malaria cases.

Source: Associated Press