A malaria vaccine from the British University of Oxford has been shown to be 77 percent effective in the first human trials. The vaccine could be a huge breakthrough in the fight against the disease that kills 400,000 every year, most of them children from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The results of trials on 450 children in Burkina Faso, West Africa, were announced Friday by the team of scientists behind the Oxford vaccine, the BBC reports.
Subjects were followed for 12 months after their vaccination. The vaccine appeared to be safe and “effective at a high level,” the researchers said.
The next step involves trials on 4,800 children from five months to three years old from four African countries. They must confirm the effectiveness of the new vaccine.
The Serum Institute of India, which produces the malaria vaccine, has announced that it can deliver at least 200 million doses if the drug is approved.
The search for malaria vaccine has been going on for years
To date, none of the many drugs tested met the 75 percent minimum effectiveness requirement set by the WHO health organization. The most successful vaccine had an effectiveness of 55 percent.
Malaria is caused by a parasite. The infectious disease is transmitted through mosquito bites and is one of the deadliest diseases in human history in absolute numbers. According to the WHO, there were some 229 million malaria cases worldwide in 2019, of which 409,000 were fatal. It is one of the most common causes of death in African children.
Patients experience symptoms such as fever, headache and chills. The disease can be treated well, but without medical intervention can lead to death within a short period of time.
NU.nl
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