WHO recommends malaria vaccine that will be rolled out next year
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[October 03, 2023]
By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Leroy Leo
GENEVA (Reuters) -The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended on
Monday the use of a second malaria vaccine to curb the life-threatening
disease spread to humans by some mosquitoes.
"Almost exactly two years ago, WHO recommended the broad use of the
world's first malaria vaccine called RTS,S," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
"Today, it gives me great pleasure to announce that WHO is recommending
a second vaccine called R21/Matrix-M to prevent malaria in children at
risk of the disease."
R21/Matrix-M, developed by Britain's University of Oxford, will become
available by mid-2024, Tedros said, adding that doses would cost between
$2 and $4.
"WHO is now reviewing the vaccine for prequalification, which is WHO
stamp of approval, and will enable GAVI (a global vaccine alliance) and
UNICEF to buy the vaccine from manufacturers," Tedros said.
20 MILLION DOSES
R21/Matrix-M is mass manufactured by Serum Institute of India and uses
Novavax's Matrix M adjuvant.
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Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, said it had already
produced more than 20 million doses in anticipation of WHO's
recommendation.
"We will ramp it up as per what the demand requirements are," he said in
an interview. "We hope that by the end of 2024, there will be zero
mismatch of demand and supply, with our supply coming into the system."
The vaccine will compete against the RTS,S shot by GSK Plc, which was
recommended by the United Nations-agency in 2021 and sold under the
brand Mosquirix.
The WHO said both vaccines had shown similar efficacy in separate
trials, but without a head-to-head trial there was no evidence showing
whether one performed better.
The agency has left it to countries to decide which product to use based
on various factors, including the affordability and supply.
"GSK has always recognized the need for a second malaria vaccine, but it
is increasingly evident that RTS,S, the first ever malaria vaccine and
the first ever vaccine against a human parasite, set a strong
benchmark," GSK said in a statement.
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![](../images/100323PIX/health19.jpg)
A nurse fills a syringe with malaria vaccine before administering it
to an infant at the Lumumba Sub-County hospital in Kisumu, Kenya,
July 1, 2022. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Oct/03/images/ads/current/chicagostreet_quarter_FAIR_2023.png) The company added that over 1.7
million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi had received at least
one dose of the shot and it would be rolled out in another nine
malaria endemic countries from early next year.
Malaria kills over 600,000 each year globally, most of them children
in Africa.
DENGUE VACCINE
Tedros added the agency had also recommended Takeda Pharmaceuticals'
vaccine against dengue called Qdenga for children aged 6 to 16 in
areas where the infection is a significant public health problem.
Dengue, common in tropical and subtropical climates, is a viral
infection spread from mosquitoes to people.
Takeda's vaccine was shown in trials to be effective against all
four serotypes of the virus in people who were previously infected
by dengue, Hanna Nohynek, chair of WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of
Experts on Immunization, told journalists.
She added, however, uncertainty lingered about its performance
against serotype 3 and 4 in people who have not been infected
previously.
The WHO's strategic advisory group also recommended a simplified
single dose regime for primary immunization for most COVID-19
vaccines to improve acceptance of the shots at a time when most
people have had at least one prior infection.
Any monovalent or bivalent vaccine could be used given that
monovalent vaccines that target the XBB.1.5 variant, which has been
dominant in many places this year, are unavailable in many
countries, the agency added.
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(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Geneva and Leroy Leo in
Bengaluru; Editing by Gareth Jones, Mark Potter and Richard Chang)
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