KAMPALA- The World Health Organization has today October 6, 2021, endorsed the first ever vaccine to prevent malaria.
The breakthrough debuts a tool that could save the lives of tens of thousands of children especially in Africa each year.
Malaria kills about 500,000 people each year, about half of them children in Africa.
The Influential New York Times reports that the new vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, rouses a child’s immune system to thwart Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of five malaria pathogens and the most prevalent in Africa. The vaccine is not just a first for malaria — it is the first developed for any parasitic disease.
“In clinical trials, the vaccine had an efficacy of about 50 percent against severe malaria in the first year, but dropped close to zero by the fourth year. And the trials did not measure the vaccine’s impact on preventing deaths, which has led some experts to question whether it is a worthwhile investment in countries with countless other intractable problems.”
A modeling study last year estimated that if the vaccine were rolled out to countries with the highest incidence of malaria, it could prevent 5.4 million cases and 23,000 deaths in children younger than age 5 each year.
And a recent trial of the vaccine in combination with preventive drugs given to children during high-transmission seasons found that the dual approach was much more effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death than either method alone.
To have a malaria vaccine that is safe, moderately effective and ready for distribution is “a historical event,” said Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of the W.H.O.’s global malaria program.
Malaria is among the oldest known and deadliest of infectious diseases. It kills about half a million people each year, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa — among them 260,000 children under age 5.
But severe malaria accounts for up to half of malaria deaths and is considered “a reliable proximal indicator of mortality,” said Dr. Mary Hamel, who leads the W.H.O.’s malaria vaccine implementation program. “I do expect we will see that impact.”
Parasites are much more complex than viruses or bacteria, and the quest for a malaria vaccine has been underway for a hundred years, he added: “It’s a huge jump from the science perspective to have a first-generation vaccine against a human parasite.”
Status of Malaria in Uganda
According to Uganda’s Ministry of Health’s Malaria Control Programme, Malaria is a major public health problem associated with slow socio-economic development and poverty and the most frequently reported disease at both public and private health facilities in Uganda.
Clinically diagnosed malaria is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality, accounting for 30-50% of outpatient visits at health facilities, 15-20% of all hospital admissions, and up to 20% of all hospital deaths. 27.2% of inpatient deaths among children under five years of age are due to malaria. A significant percentage of deaths occur at home and are not reported by the facility-based Health Management Information System (HMIS).
Uganda has the sixth highest number of annual deaths from malaria in Africa, as well as some of the highest reported malaria transmission rates in the world, with approximately 16 million cases reported in 2013 and over 10,500 deaths annually.