Ghana is first in the world to approve Oxford University malaria vaccine
Ghana has become the first country in the world to approve a malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University. It is the first time the vaccine has received regulatory approval anywhere in the world.
“The vaccine has been approved for use in children aged 5-36 months, the age group at highest risk of death from malaria,” the university said in a statement.
“It is hoped that this first crucial step will enable the vaccine to help Ghanaian and African children to effectively combat malaria,” it added.
Professor Adrian Hill, chief investigator of the R21/Matrix-M vaccine programme and director of the university’s Jenner Institute, said it marked the “culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries who need it most.”
The first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix manufactured by the British drugmaker GSK, was last year endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO). But a lack of funding and commercial potential slowed the company’s capacity to produce enough doses.
Ghana is one of the 11 countries that carry the burden of 73 per cent of the world’s malaria where a child still dies every two minutes.
Four years ago, for the first time in more than a decade, rates of malaria rose in the highest burden countries, while an increasing number of countries had less than 10,000 cases, confirming that progress had been uneven, and that was despite numerous pledges by malaria and non-malaria-affected countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the global goal of eliminating malaria by 90 per cent by 2030. The major hindrance in achieving that goal had been lack of funding.
In 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that there were 5.3 million malaria cases in Ghana with 12,500 estimated deaths recorded.
A large chunk of the country’s health budget is spent on malaria. In 2009 a former Minister of Health said, Ghana was spending an amount of $760 million every year to treat malaria.
R21 has a three-dose primary series with a fourth (booster) dose a year later.
By Emmanuel K Dogbevi
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