Ghana Makes History, Becomes First Country To Approve Use of Malaria Vaccine Developed by Oxford University

 

Ghana has approved use of a new ground-breaking malaria vaccine developed by Britain’s Oxford University.

 

This is the first time it has received regulatory clearance anywhere in the world.

 

Professor Adrian Hill, chief investigator of the R21/Matrix-M vaccine programme and director of the university’s Jenner Institute, said it marked the “culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries who need it most”.

 

The international research team suggested the vaccine could represent a turning point in the fight against the mosquito-borne parasitic disease responsible for killing 627,000 people mostly African children in 2020 alone.

 

“The vaccine has been approved for use in children aged 5-36 months, the age group at highest risk of death from malaria,” Oxford university said in a statement.

 

“It is hoped that this first crucial step will enable the vaccine to help Ghanaian and African children to effectively combat malaria,” it added.

 

Last September, Oxford announced that a booster dose of the new malaria vaccine maintained a high level of protection against the disease, expressing hopes that the inexpensive injection could be produced on a large scale in a matter of years.

 

In 2021, a different vaccine produced by GSK became the first to be recommended for widespread use against malaria by the World Health Organization, and has now been administered to more than a million children in Africa.

 

But research has found that the effectiveness of GSK’s vaccine is around 60 percent, and significantly wanes over time even with a booster dose.

 

Oxford’s R21/Matrix-M vaccine meanwhile was found to be 77 percent effective at preventing malaria in research published last year beating the percent goal set by the WHO.