The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on Tuesday that British pharmaceutical company GSK has won a contract to produce the world’s first malaria vaccine to protect millions more children against this deadly disease.
This landmark contract, worth $170 million, will make 18 million doses of the RTS,S vaccine available over the next three years, potentially saving thousands of young lives each year.
Children under five are still among the most vulnerable to malaria. In 2020, nearly half a million boys and girls died from the disease in Africa alone – that’s one death every minute.
Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said the deployment sends a clear message to malaria vaccine developers to continue their work.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 30 countries have areas with moderate or high malaria transmission and the vaccine could offer additional protection to more than 25 million children each year, once supply will have increased.
The RTS,S malaria vaccine, the result of 35 years of research and development, is the very first vaccine against a parasitic disease.