Some 360,000 children a year in three African countries are to receive a powerful anti-malaria drug as part of a pilot project to help reduce the incidence of the deadly disease.
Mary Hamel, the coordinator of the World Health Organization’s malaria vaccine program, said the vaccine “has the potential to save the lives of tens of thousands of children.”
The WHO-coordinated pilot programme is a collaborative effort with ministries of health in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi and a range of in-country and international partners, including PATH, a non-profit organization, and GSK, the vaccine developer and manufacturer, which is donating up to 10 million vaccine doses for this pilot.
#NEWS: Today, the first #malariavaccine, developed by GSK & partners (@PATHtweets), is introduced in #Malawi through a @WHO pilot programme. Thanks to everyone who played a part in reaching this historic moment. Read the WHO press release: https://t.co/GJgcK1TNoM pic.twitter.com/M6fSqPNn1P
— GSK (@GSK) April 23, 2019
Malawi on Tuesday is the first country to begin the use of the mosquirix vaccine as part of routine childhood immunization programs. Ghana and Kenya are expected to start large-scale vaccinations next week.
Mosquirix, manufactured by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has been lauded by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) after it passed scientific testing.
The total investment in the pilot scheme comes to almost $1 billion and GSK is donating millions of doses of the drug.
The pilot project, which will run until 2022 and follows somewhat of a resurgence in malaria case globally. About 435,000 people die from the disease, mostly in Africa and most of them children under the age of five.
