The program, which launched in 2019 and has reached over 800,000 children, demonstrated that the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, also known as Mosquirix, is safe, cost-effective, feasible to deliver and significantly reduced deadly severe malaria by about 30%, WHO said in a news release.
“This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the news release. “Using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.”
The WHO recommended that the vaccine could be used to help protect children from the deadliest form of malaria, known as Plasmodium falciparum. It suggested delivering the vaccine in four doses to children from 5 months old.
The vaccine works by stopping the malaria parasite maturing and multiplying in the liver, after which it would normally enter the patient’s bloodstream and trigger the disease symptoms.
“Today, the RTS,S malaria vaccine — more than 30 years in the making — changes the course of public health history,” one of the tweets read. “We still have a very long road to travel. But this is a long stride down that road,” a follow-up post continued.
“For centuries, malaria has stalked sub-Saharan Africa, causing immense personal suffering,” Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in Wednesday’s news release.
“We have long hoped for an effective malaria vaccine and now, for the first time ever, we have such a vaccine recommended for widespread use,” Moeti said. “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.”
CNN’s Jen Christensen contributed to this report.