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Malawi will conduct large-scale pilot trials on Tuesday of the world's most advanced experimental malaria vaccine to prevent the disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year in Africa.
After more than three decades of development and an investment of nearly one billion dollars, the state-of-the-art test will be rolled out this week in Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, then Kenya and Ghana next week.
It aims to vaccinate 120,000 children aged two years and under to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot vaccine and to determine if the distribution process is feasible.
For this to work, it is necessary to administer four successive doses according to a strict schedule.
The drug, named Mosquirix, was developed by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in partnership with the PATH Vaccine Vaccine Initiative.
He has successfully completed the scientific tests – including five years of clinical trials involving 15,000 people in seven countries – and was approved for the pilot program in 2015.
Episodes of malaria were reduced by 40% during the trials.
Although the potential vaccine does not provide complete protection against mosquito-borne disease, it is the most advanced in development and, to date, the most effective.
Scientists say that if it was deployed on a large scale, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives.
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that the new vaccine is an essential new tool beyond mosquito nets, insecticides and drugs to fight the disease.
Malaria killed 435,000 people in 2017. The majority of them were children under five in Africa.
"Malaria can kill a child in less than 24 hours," said researcher Tisungane Mvalo, a pediatrician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project-Malawi in Lilongwe.
"And even if the child survives, malaria can affect every organ, causing brain damage or even kidney problems Prevention is better than treatment."
"Stagnation in the fight against malaria"
Malaria is transmitted to people through the bite of anopheles infected female mosquitoes.
The latest WHO report on malaria indicates that the number of cases soared to 219 million in 2017, two million more than in 2016.
"Despite the progress made over the past decade, malaria control efforts have stagnated in recent years," said researcher Jonathan Juliano of the University of North Carolina.
"In some parts of Africa, we have actually seen a worsening of malaria infection rates.
"New interventions are needed to continue moving towards elimination."
The fight against malaria has also been complicated by the increased resistance of mosquitoes to some commonly used insecticides, according to the WHO.
Malawi, Ghana and Kenya were selected for testing because malaria rates are high and they have long used mosquito nets and other interventions.
The large-scale pilot project is the last step in decades of work to eradicate malaria.
Despite concerns about the recent increase in malaria cases, the number of people dying from the disease has declined by almost two-thirds since the turn of the century.
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