The first ever vaccine developed for malaria shows promise, but experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommend that the vaccine should be part of several pilot studies before rolling it out for clinical use.
WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) together with the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee suggested last Friday that the pilot projects involving GlaxoSmithKline's Mosquirix should be conducted to establish the efficacy of the vaccine when given in the real clinical settings.
The vaccine was seen to be ineffective in protecting children from malaria, unless it is given in four separate doses in a course of 18 months, Nature reported.
Even then, such doses do not prove to be highly effective in providing the protection.
But since malaria is a significant cause of death of over 400,000 children every year and that there is no current vaccine that's perfectly formulated, Mosquirix is the next best thing to be part of the current defense plan for malaria, which include insecticide-laced mosquito nets, spraying with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) indoors, and immediate action on outbreaks to control its spread.
In giving Mosquirix, children between five and nine months old should be given three doses and the fourth dose should be administered by age two.
If just one dose had been missed, the protection level goes way down, according to Dr. Andrea Bosman, the organization's chief of malaria prevention, in a report from the New York Times.
In addition, the vaccine can only offer four years of protection and it still remains to be seen if more boosters should be necessary.
The limitations of Mosquirix are not fresh news to the medical community as previous trials involving 15,000 children found that even with four shots, the cases of malaria decreased by only 36 percent in the young-aged group and 26 percent in infants.
With only little efficacy, the vaccine is still considered a significant step forward in the fight against malaria because no other vaccines have gone as far as Mosquirix has.
The pilot study should find out if parents will come back to complete the four doses of the vaccine.
Furthermore, it will also investigate if the vaccine is safe to use in the long run or if it can lead to meningitis, according to Jon Abramson, chair of SAGE.
