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The slow roll-out of the world’s first malaria vaccine

After 30 years of development, there is finally a vaccine for malaria. But it might take years to get it to the children who need it.
  1. Cassandra Willyard

    1. Cassandra Willyard is a science journalist in Madison, Wisconsin.

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John Bawa, who leads vaccine implementation in Africa at the global non-profit organization PATH in Accra, has been working for more than a decade on the first vaccine against malaria. And he has become used to hearing the same question: “Where is your vaccine?” So, last year, when the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of the vaccine, known as RTS,S and marketed as Mosquirix, in children living in countries hardest hit by the disease, “it was a great relief for us”, he says. “Now I have my vaccine.”

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Nature 612, S48-S49 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04343-7

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Children‘s health, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 19 January 2023: This Outlook article misrepresented the results of ref. 3. The 60% efficacy of the protection of the combination of RTS,S with chemoprevention was relative to either intervention on its own, not the efficacy of the combination itself.

References

  1. RTS,S Clinical Trials Partnership. Lancet 386, 31–45 (2015).

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