Ghana has become the first country in the world to approve a new malaria vaccine from Oxford University, with children under the age of three in line to benefit, although it is unclear when the rollout will begin.
Oxford’s R21/Matrix-M vaccine was found to be 77 percent effective at preventing malaria in research published last year – the first time the WHO’s goal of 75 percent had been met.
The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 600,000 people each year, most of them children in Africa, and scientists have been trying for years to develop vaccines.
