A new malaria vaccine shows promising results

that used to kill children in large numbers have succumbed to vaccines. is an exception. In 2020 it , mostly African children under five years old. Scientists have not ignored the scourge: the first candidate vaccine trial took place in the 1940s; more than a hundred jabs have been in development since. But the malaria parasite, spread by mosquito bites, is than viruses. The first successful vaccine was developed by GlaxoSmithKline (). It was approved by the World Health Organisation in 2021 but only prevents 44% of malarial episodes in young children. The results from a new vaccine, reported in , suggest improvements are on the way. The new jab, called 21, was developed at Oxford University. It is paired with an adjuvant (a substance that boosts the immune response to a vaccine) called Matrix-, which was developed by Novavax, an American biotech firm, for its covid-19 jab. The latest results are from a trial in Burkina Faso, where almost half of people get malaria each year. The trial enrolled 450 children aged 5-17 months. One group received the vaccine with a lower dose of the adjuvant; a second got the vaccine with a higher dose of the adjuvant; and a third, which served as a control group, received the rabies vaccine. All children were given a primary course of three jabs spaced four weeks apart and a booster jab 12 months later. They were followed for a year to see how many .