Nagpur: The World Health Organisation on Wednesday approved the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine. It is the first vaccine against malaria which kills over 4,00,000 people every year, mostly in the African region.
This is considered to be a key turning point in the battle between man and mosquito which has been going on since decades. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus while addressing a press conference said, “This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control… Using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.”
The decision was taken after the result of a pilot programme which was deployed from 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. In the programme more than two million doses of vaccine were given, made by a company called GSK in 1987.
After reviewing, the WHO chief said that it was recommending the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine. The health body also added that it was recommending children in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions which have moderate to high malaria transmission and advised to get up to four doses up to the age of two.
The agency said that in every two minutes, a child dies of Malaria.
