WHO recommends second vaccine for malaria prevention in children

The World Health Organization has recommended a second malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, for prevention of the disease in children, after a review found it to be safe and effective.Researchers and clinicians have welcomed the decision, which they hope will go some way to reducing the more than half a million malaria related deaths seen every year, as supply of the other malaria vaccine, RTS,S, is limited.“This second vaccine holds real potential to close the huge demand-and-supply gap,” said WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti. “Delivered to scale and rolled out widely, the two vaccines can help bolster malaria prevention and control efforts and save hundreds of thousands of young lives in Africa from this deadly disease.”The R21/Matrix-M vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, using Novavax’s adjuvant technology. It has been tested in four countries at sites with both seasonal (where transmission is…
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