Countries will make decisions on the implementation of RTS,S malaria vaccine - PATH

PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative has revealed that individuals would decide whether to implement the RTS,S malaria vaccine in their immunization programs or not.

In a chat with HealthNewsNG.com, Dr. Ashley Birkett, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative said the World Health Organization can only give a positive opinion for the candidate vaccine if the data that would be submitted next year look promising.

Birkett said: "If the data for the RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate looks good when it is submitted in 2014, the WHO could give a positive opinion for it in 2015, paving the way for countries to make decisions about implementation of the vaccine in their immunization programs."

Speaking on the World Health Organization's recently released 2013 roadmap for next generation malaria vaccines,  Birkett said the goal is to build on the success recorded in the development on malaria vaccines that have higher efficiency. 

"So, the 2030 target is looking to build on that progress for vaccines with higher efficacy – what we call next-generation vaccines," Birkett said.

The search for a potent vaccine has been the focus of major recent malaria researches. In an exclusive chat with HealthNewsNG.com, Dr. Robert Newman, Director, Global Malaria Programme at the World Health Organization said the war against malaria would be won by being innovative. He gave an update on the status of RTS,S candidate vaccine.

He said: "There is currently no license vaccine right now, the vaccine under review now is at Phase III clinical trial and is called the RTS,S vaccine and it is being tested in 11 different sites across 7 different countries in Africa. The trial is using this vaccine in addition to ITNs. The vaccine, even if it is successful, will not be a replacement for present strategies, it will rather be an additional strategy.

"There have been 2 papers – 2 batches of results from this trial already, 1 looking at the efficacy in preventing malaria in children between 5 and 17 months of age when they received the vaccine, and the second batch of results in younger children who received the vaccine along with their normal insect vaccination. Now the trial is ongoing and following the children up to 30 months after they were immunized which is about 3 years.

"We at WHO are following the trial like many people and we have an expert committee that sits once in a year to review the results emerging from this trial. The final data from this trial would be available in 2014 and our committee at the WHO will meet to give a recommendation one way or the other in 2015 so we shouldn’t be expecting any recommendation before 2015.

"What that recommendation will be will be dependent on what the final data from the trial show and what the committee makes of those data. These would be people who have real expertise in vaccination and with expertise on malaria who are working together to consider it through both perspectives as a biological control tool, as a vaccine and together, this group of experts would recommend to WHO how we should use the vaccine and we will make a recommendation and we would urge the countries to make use of it.

"So yea we are watching with great interest. Clearly the whole world, myself included would love to have an additional malaria control tool and we are just expecting this clinical trial to finish before we can make a recommendation."