Malawi to Test Groundbreaking Malaria Vaccine

African Nation, Malawi will be undertaking large scale pilot tests for the world’s most advanced experimental malaria vaccine in a bid to prevent the disease that kills hundreds of thousands across Africa and Asia every year.

Vaccine for Malaria

• Vaccine for Malaria under the trade name Mosquirix has been developed by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
• Four successive doses of the vaccines must be administered on a strict timetable for it to work.
• Even though the potential vaccine does not give full protection against the mosquito-borne disease, it is the furthest along in development and so far the most effective.
• The pilot tests aim to immunize around 120,000 children aged 2 and below to assess the effectiveness of the pilot vaccine and whether the delivery process is feasible.

Malaria which spreads to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes has killed 435,000 people in 2017 alone and the majority of them were children under 5 in Africa.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2019