Vaccination Against Malaria: Reality and Perspectives

Abstract

Malaria continues to be a major international public health problem. However a significant reduction in the morbidity rate has been achieved over the past decade. The effective vaccine against malaria, caused by P. falciparun, could contribute significantly to the prevention and control of the disease, as tropical malaria is most widely distributed in the world. Nowadays there is the only RTS,S/AS01 vaccine had passed the accomplished phase 3 of clinical trial and received endorsement of certain bodies of World Health Organization and European Medicines Agency. RTS,S/AS01 is a pre-erythrocytic hybrid recombinant protein vaccine. Both immunogenicity and effectiveness of this vaccine particularly in children aged of 5-12 months were demonstrated by the trial at the time for first vaccination. Vaccine should be administered 3 times as the initial series of inoculation with 4 weeks interval and then the 4th dose should be given 15-18 months later. Since there is still a number of issues required certain clarifications, the decision has been taken to undertake another relatively large pilot project in African countries, prior to final recommendations on the vaccine use could be developed and proposed to countries. The implementation of this new trial will definitely take appropriate time. The contribution of vaccine to malaria control might be significant only if used simultaneously with other proved malaria control measures, such as the use of insecticide-treated nets, detection of malaria cases with the use of rapid diagnostic tests and subsequent its treatment, chemoprevention when appropriate and, of course vector control. The consideration of the vaccine use as the mechanism, which should allow achieve the eradication of the disease is not appropriate in principle.