Trial suggests malaria sickness could be cut by 70%

A new approach to protecting young African children from malaria could reduce deaths and illness from the disease by 70%, a study suggests.

Giving them vaccines before the worst season in addition to preventative drugs produced “very striking” results, London researchers say.

The trial followed 6,000 children aged under 17 months in Burkina Faso and Mali.

Most of the 400,000 deaths from malaria each year are in the under-fives.

And the mosquito-borne disease is still a major health issue in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Booster dose
This trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, focused on giving very young children a vaccine already in use and anti-malarial drugs at the time of year they are most vulnerable – often the rainy season (from June in Burkina Faso), when mosquitoes multiply.

“It worked better than we thought would be the case,” said Prof Brian Greenwood, a member of the research team, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which led the trial.

“Hospital admissions were less, deaths were less in both countries – and we really didn’t expect to see that.”

Over three years, the trial found three doses of the vaccine and drugs before the worst malaria season, followed by a booster dose before subsequent rainy seasons, controlled infections much better than vaccines or drugs alone – and, the researchers said, could save millions of young lives in the African Sahel.

Agencies