Home News More in this Category! Tanzania medics make breakthrough in Bagamoyo field tests: Malaria vaccine in sight DAILY NEWS Reporter Daily News; Tuesday,December 09, 2008 @20:00 Also in the News Ngorongoro to build visitors' centre TCRA consumer council soothes GTV customers Serengeti tobacco farmers to get 1.6bn/- JK denounces military coups NIC restructuring takes off Prisons facility caters for children, says Kagasheki Private hospitals told to follow govt orders Loss of life solace by wild animals reaches 1m/- Govt pledges to boost TIB's capital Security guards urged to protect albinos A team of scientists from Tanzania, Kenya and Europe have shown that there is a potential of getting a malaria vaccine in the near future. According to the Acting Director of the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Dr Salim Abdulla, results of a study on a malaria vaccine candidate in Africa shows that the new vaccine provides both infants and young children substantial protection against malaria. The IHI lead researcher says the infant study conducted in Bagamoyo district found that RTS,S/AS02D, when co-administered with other common childhood vaccines at 8, 12 and 16 weeks of age, did not interfere with the efficacy of other vaccines. The experimental malaria vaccine was able to reduce the rate of infection and disease in children by 53 to 65 per cent in the clinical trials. “This is the first candidate malaria vaccine to show significant protection in laboratory and field-clinical studies,” said Dr Abdulla. In Tanzania, childhood vaccines include polio, tetanus and pertussis which are all administered through a vaccine schedule for infants under the Expanded Programme on Immuninisation (EPI). Besides the Ifakara Health Institute and European counterparts, other researchers on the vaccine included the Korogwe branch of the National Institute for Malaria Research (NIMR) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). Dr Abdulla said researchers at IHI branch in Bagamoyo, Coast region, enrolled 340 infants and administered the RTS,S/AS02 vaccine in conjunction with an EPI schedule. The study reported 65 per cent reduction against first infection from malaria in those infants over six-month follow up period. Dr Abdulla said the results of the “RTS,S vaccine are very encouraging when administered alongside the childhood vaccines now widely in use and those vaccines maintain their desired efficacy alongside RTS,S.” He said the other trial carried out in Korogwe and Kilifi in Kenya between 2007 and 2008 enrolled 894 children between 5-7 months old. Dr Abdulla said children who participated in this randomized clinical trial received either three doses of the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine or a human rabies vaccine. With the sample, the candidate RTS,S/AS01E was shown to reduce clinical malaria episodes by 53 per cent for up to an average of eight months. Researchers have been trying to develop a vaccine for the deadly, mosquito-borne illness which kills nearly a million people a year and sickens 250 million others for more than 70 years. The vaccine was first developed by GlaxoSmithKline in the late 1980’s and initially tested in US volunteers. The drug company entered a partnership with nonprofit group PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative in 2001 to test the vaccine in African children. Earlier, studies in Mozambique using a different adjuvant showed a 35 per cent reduction in clinical cases for 18 months.   COMMENTS ON THE STORY     Comment on the story Please Send us your comments or views on the story above First Name: Last name: Email: Country Comment: