Ghana Approves Use of Malaria Vaccine Developed by Oxford University on children

A malaria vaccine produced by Britain’s Oxford University will be deployed in Ghana for the first time, marking the first time it has been approved for use anywhere in the world.

The R21/Matrix-M vaccine program’s chief investigator and the university’s Jenner Institute director, Professor Adrian Hill, said it represented the “culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries who need it most.”

The vaccine, according to the international research team, might be a turning point in the struggle against the mosquito-borne parasitic disease that claim the lives of 627,000 people, largely African children, in 2020.

“The vaccine has been approved for use in children aged 5-36 months, the age group at highest risk of death from malaria,” Oxford university said in a statement. It is hoped that this first crucial step will enable the vaccine to help Ghanaian and African children to effectively combat malaria,”

A different GSK vaccine, which has now been given to more than a million African children, was the first to be approved by the World Health Organization for general use against malaria in 2021.

However, studies have shown that even with a booster dosage, the GSK vaccine’s effectiveness only lasts about 60 percent of the time.

In contrast, studies published last year indicated that Oxford’s R21/Matrix-M vaccine was 77 percent effective at preventing malaria, exceeding the percentage goal set by the WHO.

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