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2013 Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap
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The World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Malaria Programme has set an ambitious target for malaria vaccination by 2030. The updated 2013 Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap, launched this week, envisages availability of vaccines capable both of reducing malaria cases by 75% and of substantially reducing parasite transmission and hence of malaria incidence. Despite advances in treatment, malaria still affects millions of people each year and kills hundreds of thousands according to WHO figures.

This updated Roadmap is the result of a review process facilitated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), working with the Malaria Vaccine Funders Group to update the vision and strategic goals of the original 2006 Roadmap publication. The Roadmaps forms a strategic framework that underpins the activities of the global malaria vaccine research and development (R&D) community. The scaling up of malaria control measures that occurred as a result of the strategies of the 2006 Roadmap has resulted in positive changes in malaria epidemiology, including reduction in malaria transmission and an increase in the peak age of clinical malaria to older children, as well as an increase in the median age of malaria-related hospitalisation in some settings. These changes have resulted in a 26% reduction in the global malaria death rate over the last decade. They have encouraged an expansion of the Roadmap goals and the launch of the updated Roadmap.

One goal of the original 2006 Roadmap was having a licensed vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease, available for children under 5 years of age in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015. This is almost within reach, as Phase III trial final results of the most advanced vaccine candidate, RTS,S/AS01, will be available by 2015. Dependent on these results and the outcome of the regulatory review by the European Medicines Agency, a WHO recommendation for use and subsequent prequalification of this first vaccine could occur in late 2015. The new, more ambitious 2030 targets are for development of vaccines that are directed against both the Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax species of malaria. Importantly, the goals are also focused on expanding on promising early work on so-called transmission-blocking malaria vaccines. Such vaccines should be suitable for administration in mass campaigns.

The focused approach achieved by the coordination of activities of the global malaria vaccine research and development (R&D) community has already achieved important reductions in malaria transmission. The new goals aim to progressively eliminate the scourge of malaria and ultimately eradicate this disease.

Sources

http://www.who.int/immunization/topics/m...oadmap/en/ [Accessed 19 November 2013]

World Health Organization. "New malaria vaccines roadmap targets next generation products by 2030." ScienceDaily, 14 Nov. 2013. [Accessed 19 November 2013]
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