A malaria vaccine being tested in Africa has become the first drug to reach the 75 per cent efficacy rate required by the World Health Organisation.
The breakthrough by Oxford University's Jenner Institute, which developed the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19, was described as potentially a "hugely significant extra weapon" against a disease which kills more than 270,000 children per year.
The institute's director, Adrian Hill, suggested the vaccine should be given the same emergency approval as Covid-19 shots, in order to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children instead of waiting years for full trials to be completed.
"Nobody’s really ever asked that question before Covid, but we’re going to do so, and have been doing so, and regulators are sounding interested," he said.
Researchers at Oxford found the drug was effective in young children, even when taken at a lower dose.
The results of the trial of potential malaria vaccine R21/Matrix-M, carried out in Burkina Faso's Nanoro region, were published in The Lancet on Friday.
Scientists say if the drug receives approval, hundreds of millions of doses could be available to help stop the threat of malaria.
“These new results support our high expectations for the potential of this vaccine, which we believe is the first to reach the WHO’s goal of a vaccine for malaria, with at least 75 per cent efficacy,” said Adrian Hill, professor of vaccinology at Oxford.
“With the commitment by our commercial partner, the Serum Institute of India, to manufacture at least 200 million doses annually in the coming years, the vaccine has the potential to have a major public health impact if licensure is achieved.”
The drug, tested on 450 children aged between five and 17 months, showed a favourable safety profile and was well tolerated by the patients.
Children were split into three groups, with one receiving a high dose, one a low dose and the third acting as a control.
Researchers found the drug was 77 per cent effective in the group that received the high dose and 71 per cent for the low-dose group.
“These are very exciting results showing unprecedented efficacy levels from a vaccine that has been well tolerated in our trial programme,” said Halidou Tinto, a professor in parasitology who was also the main investigator for the trial.
The WHO estimates that malaria causes more than 400,000 deaths a year and that most of the victims are children in Africa, where transmission rates can be very high.
There were 229 million cases of clinical malaria reported in 2019.
More than 100 possible malaria vaccines have entered clinical trials in recent decades but none have so far shown the minimum WHO efficacy of 75 per cent.
“Malaria is one of the leading causes of childhood mortality in Africa,” said Burkina Faso’s Health Minister, Prof Charlemagne Ouedraogo.
“This new data show that licensure of a very useful new malaria vaccine could well happen in the coming years.
"That would be an extremely important new tool for controlling malaria and saving many lives.”
Researchers have now started recruitment for a Phase 3 licensing trial to assess the vaccine’s large-scale safety and efficacy in 4,800 children aged between five and 36 months in four African countries.
The annual economic costs of the disease to Africa alone amount to $12 billion. The UAE, which has been malaria-free since 2007, has been one of the countries working hard to help combat the disease worldwide.
In addition to supporting the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and donating malaria nets and other supplies to Yemen and various African nations, the UAE has also been a major supporter of Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, which is carrying out its own malaria vaccine pilots.
Through its leadership in the Reach the Last Mile initiative, a global public-private coalition is working to combat malaria, polio, river blindness and other diseases.
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Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
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- 2023: "It must be reckoned with that Hezbollah will continue to plan terrorist actions outside the Middle East against Israel or Israeli interests." Supporters in Germany: 1,250
Source: Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
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A new relationship with the old country
Treaty of Friendship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates
The United kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates; Considering that the United Arab Emirates has assumed full responsibility as a sovereign and independent State; Determined that the long-standing and traditional relations of close friendship and cooperation between their peoples shall continue; Desiring to give expression to this intention in the form of a Treaty Friendship; Have agreed as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The relations between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates shall be governed by a spirit of close friendship. In recognition of this, the Contracting Parties, conscious of their common interest in the peace and stability of the region, shall: (a) consult together on matters of mutual concern in time of need; (b) settle all their disputes by peaceful means in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 2 The Contracting Parties shall encourage education, scientific and cultural cooperation between the two States in accordance with arrangements to be agreed. Such arrangements shall cover among other things: (a) the promotion of mutual understanding of their respective cultures, civilisations and languages, the promotion of contacts among professional bodies, universities and cultural institutions; (c) the encouragement of technical, scientific and cultural exchanges.
ARTICLE 3 The Contracting Parties shall maintain the close relationship already existing between them in the field of trade and commerce. Representatives of the Contracting Parties shall meet from time to time to consider means by which such relations can be further developed and strengthened, including the possibility of concluding treaties or agreements on matters of mutual concern.
ARTICLE 4 This Treaty shall enter into force on today’s date and shall remain in force for a period of ten years. Unless twelve months before the expiry of the said period of ten years either Contracting Party shall have given notice to the other of its intention to terminate the Treaty, this Treaty shall remain in force thereafter until the expiry of twelve months from the date on which notice of such intention is given.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned have signed this Treaty.
DONE in duplicate at Dubai the second day of December 1971AD, corresponding to the fifteenth day of Shawwal 1391H, in the English and Arabic languages, both texts being equally authoritative.
Signed
Geoffrey Arthur Sheikh Zayed
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Industry: food and agriculture
Initial investment: $205,000
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The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
