Ghana is the first in the world to approve the new vaccine, which is given to children from five months to 36 months of age, the group most at risk of dying from malaria.
The university hopes that this is the first crucial step in making the vaccine widely available to African children.
Shown with good results
Professor Adrian Hill describes the announcement as the culmination of 30 years of work at the university to develop a “highly effective vaccine that can be produced on a relevant scale for the countries that need it most”.
The vaccine has shown promising results in clinical studies among young children, with a 77 percent protection against the disease, which claims more than 600,000 human lives each year, most of whom are children.
Previous variant approved
Pharmaceutical giant GSK received another malaria vaccine recommended by the World Health Organization last year, which has been given to one million children. But that vaccine has a protection rate of 60 percent, and drops significantly over time despite the booster dose.
The difficulty in developing an effective vaccine against malaria is due, among other things, to the fact that the malaria parasite goes through several stages during its life cycle. The parasite therefore changes when it enters the human body. When developing a vaccine against malaria, researchers must decide which part of the parasite’s life cycle the vaccine should target.