Combination of anti-malaria drug and vaccine would lower child mortality

Photo dated September 19, 2010 shows two children in the village of Walikale in DRC with malaria.

AP - Schalk van Zuydam

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

Combine an anti-malaria drug with the Mosquirix vaccine, to reduce malaria cases and mortality in young African children by nearly 75%.

This is the surprising conclusion of a study published in the English scientific journal

The New England Journal of Medicine

, published after an experiment which took place over three years.

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This experiment was carried out in different regions of Mali and Burkina Faso on 6,000 children under the age of one and a half.

The idea was to test not a new treatment but a novel combination.

Namely, a classic preventive treatment with antimalarial drugs such as amodiaquine and an injection of the Mosquirix preventive vaccine from the Gsk laboratory, which has been tested for several years.

The combination was administered just before the worst season for malaria, the rainy season.

►Also read: Fight against malaria: "Today, a new vaccine candidate raises great hopes"

The results impressed the researchers: if we compare the children who received only the preventive treatment with those who were treated with this combination, the latter have two and a half times less risk of catching malaria, three times less to develop a severe form and therefore to go to the hospital.

Finally, mortality has fallen by nearly 75%.

These results were welcomed by the WHO and by Malian researchers who participated in the study and who are now awaiting concrete decisions on the implementation of this treatment for young children.

Most of the 400,000 people who die from malaria each year are children under five.

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  • Africa

  • Malaria

  • Health and medicine