CAPE TOWN- A trial combining vaccinations and prevention drugs has substantially lowered the number of children dying of malaria in two African countries, with a 70% reduction in hospitalisation or death, according to researchers.
According to reports, the trial was coordinated by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with partners Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé, Burkina Faso, as well as the Malaria Research and Training Centre, University of Science, Technology and Techniques of Bamako, Mali. According to the LSHTM, the trial followed nearly 6,000 children aged 5-17 months in Burkina Faso and Mali, two countries in West Africa with a very high burden of the disease which is caused by parasites transmitted to people through bites from infected female anopheles mosquitoes.
In a statement, the researchers said they had found that after three years, the combination of seasonal administration of anti-malarial drugs and vaccination lowered clinical episodes of malaria, hospital admissions and deaths from malaria by about 70 percent. The United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper reported that researchers believed the approach could prevent some of the 400,000 deaths from the mosquito-borne disease that occur every year, most of them children.