The World Health Organization (WHO) gave the green light on Monday to a second “safe and effective” vaccine for children against malaria, a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
“As a malaria researcher, I dreamed of the day when we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two,” declared the head of the WHO, Dr.r Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The WHO “recommends a second vaccine called R21/Matrix-M to prevent malaria in children at risk of contracting the disease”, following advice from its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) and its Malaria Management Policy Advisory Group (MPAG).
This very old disease, which causes fever, headaches and chills to become a serious or even fatal condition in the absence of treatment, caused the death of 619,000 people worldwide in 2021.
Other WHO experts are still evaluating manufacturing methods and other regulatory aspects, explained the director of the immunization and vaccines department at WHO, Dr.r Kate O’Brien.
Once this final green light is obtained, Unicef and the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) will be able to administer the vaccine, which is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. However, its use has already been authorized by the authorities in Ghana, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
“Very big steps forward”
In 2021, another vaccine, RTS,S, produced by British pharmaceutical giant GSK, had become the first vaccine to be recommended by the WHO to prevent malaria in children in areas where transmission of the disease is moderate to moderate. high.
The two vaccines have similar effectiveness rates, around 75%, when administered under the same conditions.
“At a cost of between US$2 and US$4 per dose, this vaccine is comparable to other recommended methods against malaria and other childhood vaccines,” said Dr.r Tedros.
It therefore constitutes a “very big step forward” for the dozens of countries that want to obtain serums against this scourge, indicated the Dr O’Brien.
By 2026, WHO and its partners expect demands of up to 60 million doses per year. By 2030, this figure is expected to reach up to 100 million, Gavi said in a statement.
Transmitted by mosquitoes
Pilot programs to introduce “RTS,S” in three African countries — Ghana, Kenya and Malawi — have enabled more than 1.7 million children to receive at least one dose of vaccine since 2019.
In July, WHO, Gavi and UNICEF jointly announced that 18 million doses of this anti-malaria vaccine will be allocated to 12 African countries between 2023 and 2025.
Caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, malaria remains a formidable scourge, particularly for African children, due in particular to increasing resistance to treatment.
This is why Professor Megan Greischar, from Cornell University, in the United States, specifies that a vaccine will not be enough to eradicate the disease.
“In areas where malaria is common, mosquito resistance to insecticides and parasite resistance to drugs are eroding progress in public health and making existing tools less effective,” she stressed, adding that “Having one more vaccine in the toolbox is good news.”
The vast majority of cases and deaths occur in Africa.
“Since 2000, deaths caused by malaria have fallen by more than half and we have succeeded in eliminating malaria in many regions of the world” but this progress is not enough, noted the Dr Tedros.
Dengue and meningitis
WHO vaccine experts also recommended a new dengue vaccine, Qdenga, for 6-16 year olds living in areas where the disease is a significant public health problem.
A new vaccine against meningitis, called Men5CV, which protects against five species of bacteria responsible for the disease, has also been given the green light.
As for the fight against COVID-19, these experts judged that for most vaccines, a single dose was now sufficient for the primary vaccination against the disease given that most people have already been infected at least once .