GHANA has become the first country to approve a vaccine for malaria which has been hailed as a “significant milestone” by experts.

The breakthrough vaccine is called R21 and was developed by scientists at the University of Oxford and is expected to produce up to 200 million doses a year through manufacturing giant Serum Institute of India based in the capital Accra. 

Over 12-months, the vaccine has demonstrated a 77% high-level efficacy.

Malaria is reported to kill at least 612,00 people every year with Ghana being considered a hotspot for the mosquito-borne virus. Children aged 5 to 36 months are understood to be the highest at risk group. 

Prof Adrian Hill, the director of the Jenner Institute, which is part of the Nuffield Department of medicine at Oxford University, said: “This marks a culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries who need it most.

Prof Hill went on to congratulate the  “superb” clinical trial partners in Africa in developing the vaccination that could go on to save millions of lives. 

Deaths caused by malaria could reduce by up to 70% according to predictions by Prof Hill.

Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority officially gave the greenlight for the vaccine despite not being publicly available and follows previous attempts in the field which have not been successful. 

However, researchers at Oxford gave promising insight that a considerably developed vaccine was on the horizon in September 2022. 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is understood to be considering approving the game-changing vaccination also. 

Emerging data from clinical trials in African countries including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania will be published in the coming months 

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute, described Ghana being the first country in the world to sign off the vaccine as  a “significant milestone in our efforts to combat malaria around the world”.