Mosquito-borne disease malaria is responsible for around 435,000 deaths per year, and 80-90% of those deaths occur in rural sub-Saharan Africa. However, there was no vaccine until a few years back to prevent this disease. Finally, after 100 years of effort, a vaccine has become a beacon of hope. The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed a vaccine to fight malaria on October 6, 2021. After conducting pilot vaccination programs in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, the WHO said it could now be used in children's bodies to prevent moderate to high levels of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.  Six years ago, Mosquirix based 'RTS, S' proved to be effective and getting endorsed from WHO is considered a historic event. What is Mosquirix Vaccine? Mosquirix is a malaria vaccine for children aged 6 weeks to 17 months. Additionally, it can also protect against liver infection due to the hepatitis B virus. However, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suggests not using the vaccine solely for liver infection purposes. Read Covid-19 threatens global progress against malaria: WHO GlaxoSmithKline or GSK invented the vaccine back in 1987. But, they went through many development processes, and today's outcome took more than three decades. However, since the invention Mosquirix has faced some challenges as the protection faded after a few months and required up to four doses. The European Medicine Agency approved this in 2015. In one experiment, Mosquirix was found 30% effective when applied 4 times to children. The World Health Organization has set a target of vaccinating 360,000 children each year in three countries. GSK and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have funded about $750 million for the vaccine. Currently, the company is providing 1 crore vaccines free of cost in the ongoing project. Later, they are planning to recoup the money invested through large-scale projects. Read: UN endorses world's 1st malaria vaccine as 'historic moment' Since 2019, around 2.3 million doses have been applied to infants in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi on a large scale, which was coordinated by the WHO. Usage of Mosquirix A 0.5 ml Mosquirix injection is given into the muscle around the shoulder or in the muscle of the thigh. The child will need to take three injections in three months with one month gap between each dose. Further, a fourth dose is also necessary after 18 months of the third dose. However, a prescription is required to get the vaccine. How does Mosquirix RTS, S work? According to the European Medicines Agency's researchers, the active substance in Mosquirix is basically made up of proteins found on the Plasmodium falciparum parasites' surface. When it enters into the body, the immune system takes it as a foreign protein and eventually builds antibodies against them. What does RTS,S stand for? RTS,S is mainly the scientific name of the malaria vaccine candidate. The 'R' means the "central repeat region of Plasmodium (P.) falciparum circumsporozoite protein (CSP)." The 'T' stands for the T-cell epitopes of the CSP, and the 'S' stands for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). Read Trump's use of malaria drug likely to be welcomed in India

The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine and said it should be given to children across Africa in the hope that it will spur stalled efforts to curb the spread of the parasitic disease. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it “a historic moment” after a meeting in which two of the U.N. health agency’s expert advisory groups recommended the step. “Today’s recommendation offers a glimmer of hope for the continent, which shoulders the heaviest burden of the disease. And we expect many more African children to be protected from malaria and grow into healthy adults,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director. WHO said its decision was based largely on results from ongoing research in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that tracked more than 800,000 children who have received the vaccine since 2019. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline in 1987. While it’s the first to be authorized, it does face challenges: The vaccine is only about 30% effective, it requires up to four doses, and its protection fades after several months. Still, scientists say the vaccine could have a major impact against malaria in Africa, home to most of the world’s more than 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths per year. Read Also: What to know about malaria drug and coronavirus treatment “This is a huge step forward,” said Julian Rayner, director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, who was not part of the WHO decision. “It’s an imperfect vaccine, but it will still stop hundreds of thousands of children from dying.” Rayner said the vaccine’s impact on the spread of the mosquito-borne disease was still unclear, but pointed to those developed for the coronavirus as an encouraging example. “The last two years have given us a very nuanced understanding of how important vaccines are in saving lives and reducing hospitalizations, even if they don’t directly reduce transmission,” he said. Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, head of the WHO vaccine group that made the recommendation, said designing a shot against malaria was particularly difficult because it is a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes. “We’re confronted with extraordinarily complex organisms,” he said. “We are not yet in reach of a highly efficacious vaccine, but what we have now is a vaccine that can be deployed and that is safe.” WHO said side effects were rare, but sometimes included a fever that could result in temporary convulsions. Also read: Covid-19 threatens global progress against malaria: WHO Sian Clarke, co-director of the Malaria Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine would be a useful addition to other tools against the disease that might have exhausted their utility after decades of use, like bed nets and insecticides. “In some countries where it gets really hot, children just sleep outside, so they can’t be protected by a bed net,” Clarke said. “So obviously if they’ve been vaccinated, they will still be protected.” In recent years, little significant progress has been made against malaria, Clarke said. “If we’re going to decrease the disease burden now, we need something else,” she explained. Azra Ghani, chair of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, said she and colleagues estimate that giving the malaria vaccine to children in Africa might result in a 30% reduction overall, with up to 8 million fewer cases and as many as 40,000 fewer deaths per year. “For people not living in malaria countries, a 30% reduction might not sound like much. But for the people living in those areas, malaria is one of their top concerns,” Ghani said. “A 30% reduction will save a lot of lives and will save mothers (from) bringing in their children to health centers and swamping the health system.” The WHO guidance would hopefully be a “first step” to making better malaria vaccines, she said. Efforts to produce a second-generation malaria vaccine might be given a boost by the messenger RNA technology used to make two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines, those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, she added. “We’ve seen much higher antibody levels from the mRNA vaccines, and they can also be adapted very quickly,” Ghani said, noting that BioNTech recently said it would begin researching a possible malaria shot. “It’s impossible to say how that may affect a malaria vaccine, but we definitely need new options to fight it.”