New trial for children’s malaria vaccine
Children under the age of five stand to benefit from a new malaria vaccine which is due to go into clinical trial in The Gambia this month, once children for the trial have been screened.
The trial is the first concrete step in a new partnership between the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (a programme of the United States-based non-profit organisation, Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health) and GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals.
Children under the age of five and pregnant women are the most vulnerable to malaria. Most of the one million people who die each year are African children under the age of five.
About 90 children between the ages of six to eleven will be involved in the first phase of the trial which will test the safety and immune response of the “RTS, S” vaccine. If the results are successful, two subsequent trials will test the vaccine in children between the ages of one to five.
Resarchers have safely tested the vaccine among adult volunteers in the United States, Belgium, Kenya and The Gambia. To date no malaria vaccines have ever been tested and found successful in children..
In South Africa, malaria has shown a steady increase since the mid-1980s, with a dramatic rise since 1996. District and sub-district analysis by the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council also point to the spread of the disease into previous lower risk areas.
It is estimated that worldwide, about 300 to 500 million people are currently infected by malaria and another 2,3 billion are at risk of the disease.
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