A malaria vaccine from the University of Oxford won its first approval in Ghana, which is ramping up efforts to combat the mosquito-borne disease that kills a child every minute.
This vaccine comes as part of efforts focused on confronting the disease that kills more than 600,000 people annually, most of them children in Africa.
The complex life cycle of the malaria parasite has long hampered vaccine development efforts.
After decades of work, the first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, made by British pharmaceutical company GSK, won WHO approval last year, but a lack of funding and commercial opportunities hampered the company’s ability to produce the necessary doses.
The Oxford vaccine won regulatory approval for the age group most at risk of dying from malaria, which is children between the ages of five and 36 months. The vaccine has an advantage in terms of manufacturing thanks to a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses annually.
