Millions of Nigerian children and indeed African children now have a chance of being protected from Malaria, if an ongoing final clinical vaccines trial ends successfully.
The test which is already carried out on 16,000 children from seven African countries, found that booster doses are of limited use, but children aged between 5-17 months were given three doses of the vaccine and was 46 per cent effective.
Scientists have been working on the vaccine for more than 20 years but observers believe there is still a long way to go.
Study Author and Professor of Clinical, Topical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Brian Greenwood, said the result from the clinical trials was a little disappointing.
“I hoped the vaccine will be more effective, but we were never going to end up with the success seen in measles vaccines with 97 per cent efficacy, that is because the Malaria parasite has a complicated life cycle and it had learned how to invade the immune system over hundreds of years.”
The vaccinations took place in 11 sites across Burkinafaso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Malaria currently kills more than 660,000 people a year, and some 1,300 children in sub-Saharan Africa die every day from the parasitic disease – nearly one child every minute.