Correct Answer :   Second

The World Health Organization (WHO) has endorsed a second malaria vaccine to protect children against the deadly disease, which killed 619,000 people in 2021.

Researchers say that the vaccine, known as R21, is easier to make than the first-approved malaria vaccine, called RTS,S, and will be cheaper per dose.

“There’s going to be enough of it to actually give out to children,” says Jackie Cook, a malaria epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

R21 met the WHO’s target of 75% efficacy at preventing the disease in a trial with 4,800 children who each received three doses before a seasonal malaria peak.

A booster dose after 12 months maintained protection. Data from the phase III trial, conducted in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania, were presented in a preprint1 posted on 26 September 2023.

“By adding the vaccine to the current tools that are in place, tens of thousands of children’s lives will be saved every year,” said epidemiologist Mary Hamel — who leads the WHO’s malaria vaccine implementation programme — at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on 2 October, announcing the endorsement. The WHO recommendation followed discussions by the agency’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization and its Malaria Policy Advisory Group last week.

Already approved in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria, the vaccine will be available in mid-2024 at US$2–4 per dose. RTS,S, which the WHO recommended for use in children in 2021, costs around $9.80 per dose..

Source : Nature