LONDON: The world's most advanced malaria vaccine got the nod Friday from European regulators, despite mixed trial results, for eventual use in children in African countries plagued by the killer disease.
Dubbed Mosquirix or RTS,S, the drug received a "positive scientific opinion" from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) following decades of research and millions of dollars of investment.
But it has yet to pass a final World Health Organization (WHO) hurdle, and may not become available before 2017.
Mosquirix is the most clinically-advanced vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease that infects some 200 million people and kills about 600,000 every year, more than 75 percent of them children under five.
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the plasmodium parasite kills about 1,200 children on average per day, according to the WHO.
The EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use had analysed the quality, safety and efficacy of the drug, and its benefit-to-risk ratio, "for use outside the European Union".
AFP
