LONDON: For the first time in the history of the Medical science, a viable vaccine has been developed to fight Malaria. The vaccine comes after 30 long years of research and clinical experiments. However, the bad news is that the shot can only fight against one strain of Malaria causative agents.
The vaccine developed, exclusively fights against a particular type of Malaria i.e., the Malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum. This type of strain is confined only to the sub-Saharan Africa and is not effective in the Asian regions like India and Srilanka, where Malaria is primarily caused by Plasmodium Vivax.
British pharma company GlaxoSmithKline, has announced today that their vaccine Mosquirix has been recommended to be licensed for use in babies in Africa. It is the World’s first viable vaccine to fight Malaria. The Pharma company said that it has invested £360 millions to develop the vaccine and is awaiting license from the concerned Health departments.
The dreadful disease has affected 198million people in Africa by 2013. The World Health Organization is yet to examine the vaccine and give its approval.
The GSK officials said, “The vaccine fights effectively against one type of Malaria(Plasmodium falciparum) and it has not shown effective results against the Plasmodium Vivax, which is predominant in the Asian region. Therefore, it is not for the people in Asia. However, we have a treatment under development to fight against the Malarial vivax”
The Pharma company said, that the European Medicine agency has adopted a positive response over the vaccine and that it has recommended the vaccine in children aged 6weeks to 17 months, the Times of India reports.