WHO recommends use of world's first malaria vaccine for children in 'breakthrough'

The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly African children.

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2009 file photo, a mother holds her baby as she receives a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial. Source: AP

The decision followed a review of a pilot programme deployed since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in which more than two million doses were given of the vaccine, first made by the pharmaceutical company GSK in 1987.

After reviewing evidence from those countries, the WHO said it was "recommending the broad use of the world's first malaria vaccine", the agency's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

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