WHO approves world's first malaria vaccine, which kills hundreds of thousands of children each year

The World Health Organization has approved the widespread use of the world's first malaria vaccine. This was reported on the organization's website.

The latest phase of trials of the vaccine, marketed under the brand name Mosquirix, has been ongoing since 2019, involving more than 800,000 children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.

The vaccine showed limited effectiveness, preventing infection in only 39% of cases and reducing the likelihood of severe disease by 29%. However, when combined with antimalarial drugs, its effectiveness against severe disease and death increased to 70%.

The WHO called the approval of the vaccine a "historic moment."

• Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people in Africa every year, most of them children under five. In 2019, malaria killed 386,000 people on the continent. By comparison, 212,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Africa since the start of the pandemic.
• The malaria vaccine has been in development for over 30 years.