The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu Senior Reporter
THE first ever vaccine for malaria can save millions of children in Zimbabwe and sub-Saharan Africa if approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and distributed to the affected countries, a senior health official has said. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a British multinational pharmaceutical company developed the vaccine and is being backed by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.
The shot, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, is said to be able to protect children from the life-threatening disease for up to four years once immunised. About 500 000 children die from malaria every year — one child every minute — mainly in Africa.
The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) in London is set to decide whether to recommend the vaccine, which has been in development for 30 years and has cost more than $565 million so far.
Dr Joseph Mberikunashe, Malaria Programmes Director in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, said if registered it would be the first parasitic vaccine on the market as current vaccines available were bacterial and viral vaccines. He further said the use of the vaccine was favourable.
“The European Medicines Agency under article 58 issued a positive scientific opinion, for use outside the European Union indicating that the quality of the vaccine and the risk or benefit is favourable,” said Dr Mberikunashe.
This, he said, was not a licence because individual governments would have to licence the vaccine in their own territories (if need be) as guided by their regulatory authorities, when appropriately approached by the manufacturer of the vaccine.
WHO will convene the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts meeting on immunisation and the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee review on efficacy and safety of the vaccine as well as other relevant data for Global Policy in October and propose recommendations to WHO.
Dr Mberikunashe said there were other contextual elements that would have to be considered such as feasibility of implementation, value of vaccine in the context of other control measures and the likely cost effectiveness in different settings.
“Whether countries will adopt this vaccine or not, it should be noted that there are still other more cost effective interventions which are currently being employed and which should continue to be deployed, prevention of malaria through vector control, testing for malaria and treatment of malaria with effective anti-malarial medicines,” he said.
He said the vaccine may be considered as a complementary intervention to other known effective interventions that have been used in various countries.
Dr Mberikunashe, however, said Zimbabwe still had a long way to go before it could start celebrating the first ever vaccine.
“The main malaria interventions used today will remain in place as they have proven to work and assist in achieving elimination. Whether the vaccine will be given free of charge or not, I suppose the policy makers will give guidance as they have always done on other vaccines on the market,” he said.
The rollout of the vaccine, which also has to be approved by national health authorities in sub-Saharan Africa, is expected to be funded by Gavi, a vaccine alliance founded by the Gates Foundation. It is unclear how much it would cost.
GSK says it would set a price that covers its costs plus a profit margin of five percent, which would be reinvested in research on malaria and other neglected diseases.
The shot is about 10 years ahead of other malaria vaccines in development. It targets the deadly version of the disease prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to reports the vaccine works better in children from the age of five months than in younger babies.
This means it cannot be added to the routine infant vaccination schedule. Another drawback is that it is a multi-dose vaccine, and its effect decreases over time so a booster shot is needed.
There were 198 million malaria cases in sub-Saharan Africa in 2013 and experts say even a partially effective vaccine could prevent millions of cases.
