Oxford malaria vaccine wins first regulatory approval from Ghana
A new malaria vaccine developed at Oxford university has won approval by health authorities in Ghana, the first regulatory clearance for a jab that promises to reinvigorate the fight against a disease that is a leading cause of infant mortality worldwide.
The Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the vaccine called R21, said on Thursday that the preventive had received “full national licensure” from Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority. The institute said R21 could be rolled out at “mass scale and modest cost, enabling . . . hundreds of millions of doses to be supplied to African countries which are suffering a significant malaria burden”.
He also said it was “still uncertain” if R21 was value for money, “especially when compared to other cost-effective malaria interventions that have not been fully deployed across endemic countries, such as insecticide-treated nets or indoor residual spraying”.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Donato Paolo Mancini
