WHO recommends first malaria vaccine for African children: ‘Glimmer of hope’
Fox News
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday recommended widespread use of the first malaria vaccine for African children, aimed to cut disease burden and save tens of thousands of lives.
"This is a historic moment," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement posted Wednesday. "The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control. Using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year."
The mosquito-borne disease is blamed as a primary cause of childhood morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, with over 260,000 African children under age 5 succumbing to the disease each year, according to the global health agency, while an estimated 2,000 malaria diagnoses occur in the U.S. annually, with the most cases stemming from travelers and immigrants from countries with malaria spread, many from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).