ACCRA: Ghana has become the first country across the world to approve Oxford University’s new vaccine for malaria. The approval, which is for children aged between five and 36 months, has been granted by Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) even before the publication of final-stage trial data.
It is unclear when the malaria vaccine may be rolled out in Ghana as other regulators, including the World Health Organization (WHO), are still examining its safety and effectiveness.
The vaccine, known as R21, has been developed to combat malaria, which kills over 600,000 people every year, most of them children in Africa.
Oxford University’s malaria vaccine
Oxford has a deal with India’s Serum Institute to produce around 200 million doses of the malaria vaccine annually. This was the first time a major vaccine got approval in an African country ahead of rich nations, said Adrian Hill, an Oxford scientist. Approving a vaccine ahead of the publication of data from final-stage trials is also limited, experts told Reuters.
“Particularly since COVID-19, African regulatory bodies have been taking a much more proactive stance; they have been saying… we do not want to be last in the queue,” Hill said. Vaccines have taken several years to develop, due to the complicated structure and lifecycle of the malaria parasite. The Oxford University shot is the second to be approved for use in recent years.
