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Experts Welcome World’s First Malaria Vaccine

GlaxoSmithKline-1611

From test trial, the world’s first vaccine to tackle malaria, a disease that threatens the life of about 3.3 billion worldwide, will soon be available in commercial quantity for the treatment of the disease.

British drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), is seeking regulatory approval to produce the malaria vaccine for sale, after trial data showed that it had cut the number of cases in African children.

Experts Tuesday welcomed the bid, saying they are optimistic about the possibility of the world’s first vaccine being deployed to tame malaria, after the trial results.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide yearly, with an estimated 219 million cases of the disease reported in 2010, causing an estimated 660,000 deaths.

But scientists said an effective vaccine was crucial to attempts to eradicate the disease instead of the drug regimen being used now to fight it.

The vaccine known as RTS,S was found to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial and to have reduced by about 25 per cent the number of malaria cases in infants.

Researchers found out that the vaccine, which is being developed in the US, protected 12 out of 15 patients from the disease, when given in high doses.

The method is unusual because it involves injecting live but weakened malaria-causing parasites directly into patients to trigger immunity.

The malaria trial was Africa’s largest-ever clinical exercise involving almost 15,500 children in seven countries. The findings were presented at a medical meeting in Durban, South Africa.

“Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA),” the pharmaceutical company said in a statement.

The statement said the hope now is that WHO may recommend the use of the RTS,S vaccine from as early as 2015 if EMA drugs regulators back its licence application.

UK politician Lynne Featherstone, International Development Minister, said: “Malaria is not just one of the world’s biggest killers of children, it also burdens health systems, hinders children’s development and puts a brake on economic growth. An effective malaria vaccine would have an enormous impact on the developing world.”

“We welcome the scientific progress made by this research and look forward to seeing the full results in due course.”

A pediatrician with a general hospital in Lagos, who craved anonymity, said the development would have a salutary effect because of the burden of malaria disease on the continent.

According to him, the disease ranks highest in claiming the lives of children under-five and a vaccine to check the death toll from malaria would be highly appreciated.
Also speaking on the vaccine, Dr. Olumuyiwa Odusote of the Lagos General Hospital, described the development as cheery.

However, Odusote stated that all precautionary measures and checks would have to be done by regulatory authorities to ensure that when the vaccine is eventually released into the market, it would be efficacious.

THISDAY

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