Medicinal-forskere har gennem årtier forsøgt at udvikle en malaria-vaccine. Nu er den inden for rækkevidde. Den sidste kliniske testfase er sat ind i syv afrikanske lande, herunder Malawi, hvor sygdommen kræver 6.500 liv om året, heraf de fleste børn under fem år, skriver IRIN NEWS mandag.
LILONGWE: Tisungane Mvalo, head of the research team at the Malawian trial site, which is being run in partnership with the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, said the current methods for controlling the incidence of malaria in Malawi have had limited success.
“We have had a moderate reduction in infant mortality from interventions like bed nets and insecticides but malaria remains the leading cause of infant mortality,” he said. “There still needs to be an additional intervention.”
The multi-country trial of the malaria vaccine RTS,S, made by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, is one of the largest ever carried out in sub-Saharan Africa. With funding from GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative – an NGO that develops research for malaria – 15,000 newborns and infants are being inoculated at 11 sites across the region.
The children are then monitored over a period of 36 months to assess the effectiveness of RTS,S, which in previous studies reduced cases of severe malaria in infants by 53 percent. If the results, due to be released later this, year confirm the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing malaria, it could be made available as early as 2015.
“It’s a very exciting time,” said PATH Director Dr Christian Loucq, speaking from his office in Washington. “We have estimated in our models that a vaccine like this could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.”
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