Ghana has become the first country in the world to approve a new malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University, providing hope in the fight against a disease that kills more than 600,000 people each year, the vast majority of whom are children in Africa. Ghana’s drug regulator has approved the new vaccine for children aged five to 36 months, who are at the greatest risk of dying from malaria. The vaccine has an agreement with India’s Serum Institute to produce up to 200 million doses per year.
According to research published last year, the vaccine, known as R21/Matrix-M, is 77% effective at preventing malaria. The vaccine was tested in a trial involving over 400 children and has since advanced to a phase III clinical trial involving 4,800 children in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania. The trial’s findings are expected to be published in the coming months.
Oxford’s vaccine is the second major malaria vaccine, following GSK’s Mosquirix. Mosquirix’s effectiveness, on the other hand, is about 60%, and it fades significantly over time, even with a booster dose. Due to a lack of funding and commercial potential, GSK’s production capacity has also been limited.
The WHO approved Mosquirix last year after decades of research, but the process for the new Oxford vaccine has been different. According to Oxford scientist Adrian Hill, it is unusual that an African regulatory authority reviewed the data faster than the WHO. African regulators have become more proactive since the arrival of COVID-19 on the continent. The WHO is still evaluating the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.
Childhood vaccines in Africa are typically paid for by international organisations such as Gavi and UNICEF after they have been approved by the WHO. Ghana’s approval of the vaccine for children under the age of three is a significant step toward the vaccine’s wider distribution. Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi all participated in the Mosquirix pilot programme and have begun to distribute it more widely in recent months. Since it began in 2019, 1.2 million children in the three countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the WHO reported last month that in areas where the vaccine has been administered, all-cause child mortality has dropped by 10%, indicating the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Oxford’s vaccine has a contract with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses per year, and Hill claims that this is the first time a major vaccine has been approved in an African country before rich nations. This is an important step forward in the fight against malaria, which primarily affects the world’s poorest populations.
To summarise, Ghana’s approval of the new malaria vaccine is an important step toward wider distribution of the vaccine in Africa, where the disease has a significant impact on the population. The vaccine’s efficacy exceeds that of the current malaria vaccine on the market, providing hope for a reduction in the number of malaria-related deaths each year. While the WHO is still evaluating the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, Ghana’s drug regulator’s approval is an important step toward its widespread use. The vaccine’s production agreement with the Serum Institute of India is an important step toward ensuring that it is widely available to those who need it the most.