Ghana Becomes First Country to Approve ‘World-Changer’ Malaria Vaccine From Oxford University

A new malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University has been given the green light by Ghanaian authorities for use in Ghana.

The R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed by Oxford University scientists and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, “has been approved for use in children aged 5-36 months, the age group most at risk of death from malaria,” according to a statement from the University.

Malaria, a parasite illness spread by mosquitoes, claimed the lives of 627,000 individuals in 2020 alone, the majority of them were African children.

“It is hoped that this crucial first step will enable the vaccine to help Ghanaian and African children effectively fight malaria,” said Oxford.

The Ghanaian government’s approval “marks the culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford, with the design and availability of a highly effective vaccine that can be delivered on an adequate scale to the countries that need it most,” Adrian Hill, head of the R21/Matrix-M program and a vaccine expert at Oxford, said on Thursday.

It is “a low-dose vaccine that can be manufactured on a large scale and at a modest cost, which would provide hundreds of millions of doses to African countries with a high malaria burden,” he continued.

The vaccine uses Matrix-M adjuvant, a vaccine component with a Novavax patent that is also present in the Covid vaccine produced by a U.S. biotechnology business.

A different vaccine created by British pharmaceutical behemoth GSK was the first malaria vaccine to get WHO approval in 2021. However, studies have revealed that even with a booster dose, the GSK vaccine’s efficacy only reached approximately 60% and drastically decreased with time.

The Oxford R21/Matrix-M vaccine was 77% efficient at preventing malaria, according to 2021 research. The WHO effectiveness objective of 75% was surpassed by vaccination for the first time with this.