The World Health Organization has approved a new anti-malaria vaccine, which will offer countries a cheap and more accessible option to combat one of the leading causes of child deaths in Africa.
Developed by Oxford University, the R21/Matrix-M vaccine is the second such vaccine to be recommended by the WHO, it said in a statement Monday.
The recommendation, based on preclinical and clinical trial data, showed that the vaccine reduced symptomatic cases by 75 percent following a three-dose series in a year, in areas with high seasonal malaria transmission. The Phase III clinical trial results are under peer review, Oxford said in a statement.
At a cost of $2-4 per dose, R21 was a cost-effective intervention, the WHO said, adding that it expects the vaccine to be available by mid-2024. “As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the statement.