Malaria vaccine developed by the team behind the Oxford coronavirus jab has been found to be 77 per cent effective in providing protection against the mosquito-borne disease, in a major scientific breakthrough.
The vaccine for malaria has surpassed 75 per cent efficacy goal set by the WHO. According to Professor Adrian Hill (whose work at Oxford University’s Jenner institute set the foundations for the Oxford Covid jab) the findings come from the first 12 months of an ongoing phase two trial, which was first launched in Burkina Faso in May 2019 and involves 450 children, aged 5 to 17 months.
Scientists have been trying to produce an effective vaccine against malaria, caused by the Plasmodium parasite, since 1907. Due to the size of the malaria parasite, which is much bigger than a virus, finding the right protein in its genome to target and neutralise is remarkably difficult, making both natural and artificially induced immunity hard to achieve.
