Johannesburg: New research shown that an anti-malaria vaccine offering developed protection to children could be registered for use in four years, saving millions of young lives.  

The safety of RTS,S/AS02D malaria vaccine has been confirmed in a clinical trail involving 214 infants, announced the scientists.

Malaria kills more than one million children every year, and most of them are African children under 5, and that’s why Mozambique has one of world’s highest child mortality rates, According to UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).   

The vaccine could decrease the risk of new infections by 65 percent, concluded in research by Dr. Pedro Alonso of the Manhica Health Research Center, in Mozambique and the Hospital Clinic of Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.  

GlaxoSmithKline, a global pharmaceutical company, with the Malaria Vaccine Initiative by PATH, an international, non-profit health organization are developing the vaccine.   

The children were divided into two groups, first one to receive three doses of vaccine and second to receive a hepatitis B vaccine as a control, at ages 10 weeks, 14 weeks and 18 weeks. The initial findings were published in British medical journal, the Lancet.    

Researchers said the candidate vaccine was “safe, well-tolerated and highly immunogenic in young infants living in a rural area of southern Mozambique.” A strong association between vaccine-induced antibodies and a reduced risk of malaria infection is also seen in the study.

The researchers said, “We have shown that a vaccine can reduce the risk of malaria infection in young African infants exposed to intense transmission of P. falciparum,” which is the most deadly of four strains of malaria parasite that infects humans.

The RTS,S/AS02D candidate vaccine targets to decrease its ability to infect and proliferate in liver.  

The vaccine would be effective as part of a layered strategy against malaria, including the provision of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and spraying insecticides to protect people against mosquitoes. If used properly, ITNs can reduce malaria transmission by at least 60 percent and child deaths by a fifth, according to WHO.