The world’s first malaria vaccine has gotten a go- ahead from the European drugs regulators to be used in Africa to control malaria.
The vaccine was recommended safe and effective to use on babies in Africa at a risk of the mosquito-borne disease.
The vaccine, RTS,S or Mosquirix, was developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), in collaboration with Seattle-based nonprofit organization PATH’s global program, PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI).
According to GSK, the vaccine would be the first licensed human vaccine against malaria, which is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.
It will now be assessed by the World Health Organization the it promised to recommend the use of the vaccine later this year alongside other tools to prevent the disease.
Global health experts have long hoped scientists would be able to develop an effective malaria vaccine, and researchers at GSK have been working on RTS,S for 30 years. The shot also contains an adjuvant, or booster, made by U.S. biotech company Agenus. Reuters reported.
Some malaria specialists have expressed concern that the complexities and potential costs of deploying this first vaccine when it provides only partial protection make it less attractive and more risky.
David Kaslow, PATH’s vice president of product development said that the timing, duration and outcomes of some of the critical steps to possible vaccine implementation in African countries were not yet known.
GSK has promised it will make no profit from Mosquirix, pricing it at the cost of manufacture plus a 5 percent margin which it will reinvest in research on malaria and other neglected tropical diseases.
Sources involved in planning for Mosquirix’s potential future use have told Reuters they’ve been advised to work with a price tag of around $5 per dose, which would bring the cost of a recommended four-dose immunization to $20.
Malaria infects around 200 million people a year and killed an estimated 584,000 in 2013, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 80 percent of malaria deaths are in children under the age of five.
