The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommendation for use of a vaccine against malaria has raised hopes of success in the long fight against this mass killer. The recommendation is based on the results of a pilot project conducted in three sub-Saharan countries — Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Over eight lakh children and infants were vaccinated in the pilot project which started in 2019 and it has recorded 30% success. The success rate may be seen to be on the lower side but considering that malaria affects millions of children worldwide, some of them more than once, and takes lakhs of lives, the efficacy rate means much more than the percentage. It is capable of saving many lakhs of lives in the years to come. The vaccine, Mosquirix, was developed after decades of research by the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom has termed the decision to use the vaccine as historic because it marks a breakthrough not only for malaria control but also for child health and science itself. WHO has said that nearly half of the world’s population is vulnerable to malaria while its incidence is most widespread and acute in sub-Saharan Africa. Children are affected more than adults. About 229 million cases and over four lakh deaths were reported in 2019, and 94% of the deaths were from Africa. Children under five years of age accounted for two-thirds of the deaths. The importance of vaccination and the need to prioritise African countries for vaccination is clear from the figures. India has made considerable progress in reducing its malaria burden and deaths caused by the disease between 2000 and 2019. It has maintained that there were only 77 malarial deaths in 2019, though the WHO estimate is higher than that. 

WHO has expressed the hope that its approval will encourage the development of more vaccines against malaria. Researchers from Oxford University have announced that they have a vaccine candidate which may attain 75% efficacy. Germany’s BioNTech has said that it plans to start trials of a malaria vaccine that uses mRNA technology. While these may be in the pipeline, the immediate task is to manufacture the vaccine on an industrial scale and to distribute it at an affordable price among the countries that most need it. The Gavi vaccine alliance, which has tried to make an equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, has taken a welcome initiative to finance the malaria vaccine programme for the most needy countries. While the vaccine route may have been opened in the fight against malaria, success is still far away. So WHO has done well to emphasise that there should not be any laxity in routine malaria prevention activities.

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