The malaria vaccine is a very important step towards eradicating malaria that kills tens of thousands of children each year. In Africa, for example, they cause 260,000 deaths and about 400,000 deaths worldwide, of which 240,000 are children.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, of the World Health Organization (WHO), has assured that this is a "historic" moment and that every year "will save the lives of thousands of young people". “We have been waiting for an effective malaria vaccine for a long time and now, for the first time, we have a recommended vaccine for general use.”

Specifically, the WHO has recommended the use of this vaccine in children in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is an intermediate or high transmission of the parasite Plasmodium falcicarium. This parasite passes through mosquitoes. The vaccine has been manufactured by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, a listed multinational based in Brentford, in the United Kingdom. Mosquirix will be your trade name.

Ghana, Kenya and Malawi were tested in 2019 to 90% of children who did not sleep under the veil of mosquitoes, and the main result is that the number of serious cases causing death has been reduced by 30%. According to the WHO report, the vaccine is “cost-effective” and easy to produce and store. It needs four doses to achieve this effectiveness.

Disease related to inequality

Malaria remains one of the main causes of the high infant mortality rate in the countries of central and southern Africa and is widespread in America – the Europeans led it to conquer that territory. Europe, however, was declared "malaria-free" by the WHO in 2016.

In southern Europe, it was endemic for a long time and until the twentieth century the population suffering from malaria was not poor, to the point of evicting the populations of the wetlands. Although the use of hazardous insecticides became radicalized, in the 1990s it was re-expanded. In any case, there are hardly any cases today as a result of preventive measures.

Thus, most malaria deaths are attributed to inequality. In fact, it can be avoided if some basic training and prevention measures are taken, but for many African citizens who do not have resources and live in precarious living conditions this is impossible. Madrid physician Pedro Alonso, director of the World Malaria Programme, has acknowledged that: “Those who die are poor, it’s a disease of inequality, it’s people who don’t have access to some basic instruments, such as a mosquito net rubbed with an insecticide.”

Twenty years after mass programmes for the use of mosquito nets began in Africa in 2000, and despite the fact that they have partly prevented the transmission of malaria, difficulties in access to the entire population mean that flying insects with deadly parasites remain a nightmare in many homes. That is why the WHO approved vaccine is good news for those who fight the disease.