Tag: the World Health Organization (WHO)

WHO Malaria Vaccine

WHO Recommends New Vaccine For Malaria

By LokMarg

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended a new vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, for the prevention of malaria in children, an official release said.

The recommendation follows advice from the WHO: Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group (MPAG) and was endorsed by the WHO Director-General following its regular biannual meeting held on September 25-29.

WHO also issued recommendations on the advice of SAGE for new vaccines for dengue and meningitis, along with immunisation schedules and product recommendations for COVID-19.  WHO also issued key immunisation programmatic recommendations on polio, IA2030 and recovering the immunisation programme, it added.

The R21 vaccine is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, following the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, which received a WHO recommendation in 2021. Both vaccines are shown to be safe and effective in preventing malaria in children and, when implemented broadly, are expected to have a high public health impact. Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, places a particularly high burden on children in the African Region, where nearly half a million children die from the disease each year, the release said.

Demand for malaria vaccines is unprecedented; however, the available supply of RTS,S is limited.  The addition of R21 to the list of WHO-recommended malaria vaccines is expected to result in sufficient vaccine supply to benefit all children living in areas where malaria is a public health risk. 

“As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General in a media briefing with Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation.

“Demand for the RTS,S vaccine far exceeds supply, so this second vaccine is a vital additional tool to protect more children faster, and to bring us closer to our vision of a malaria-free future,” he added.

Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, emphasised the importance of this recommendation for the continent, saying, “This second vaccine holds real potential to close the huge demand-and-supply gap. Delivered to scale and rolled out widely, the two vaccines can help bolster malaria prevention and control efforts and save hundreds of thousands of young lives in Africa from this deadly disease.”

The next steps for the second recommended malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, include completing the ongoing WHO prequalification which would enable international procurement of the vaccine for a broader rollout.

At least 28 countries in Africa plan to introduce a WHO-recommended malaria vaccine as part of their national immunisation programmes. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has approved providing technical and financial support to roll out malaria vaccines to 18 countries. The RTS,S vaccine will be rolled out in some African countries in early 2024, and the R21 malaria vaccine is expected to become available to countries in mid-2024, a WHO release said. (ANI)

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COVID Cases in China

World Has No Faith In Chinese Covid Figures: Report

By LokMarg

There is great skepticism about the COVID data released by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) recently accused it of underplaying the seriousness of the pandemic by concealing the true nature of the situation in the country, the Hong Kong Post reported.

A senior WHO official, as quoted by The Hong Kong Post, had said: “China’s COVID data is not giving an accurate picture of the situation there and it under-represents the number of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.”

Emergencies Director of WHO Mike Ryan said: “We believe the current numbers being published from China under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, particularly in terms of death.”

The WHO believes that the definition of death by the Chinese government is “too narrow”.

After Beijing authorities changed their definition of COVID deaths, there is a discrepancy in the death figures claimed by the government and reports from ground. Based on the new definition, the authorities have claimed five or fewer deaths in a day. But funeral homes and hospitals in China say they are overwhelmed.

This definition has met with the scepticism of experts around the world. The WHO has defined COVID-related deaths as those resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a patient with a probable or confirmed infection when no other unrelated cause of death is involved, according to a report in The Hong Kong Post.

The report said that it is not surprising that the rest of the world is not taking the claims of the Chinese authorities at face value and have clamped strict restrictions on people travelling into different countries from China, including suspension of flights and strict Covid-19 testing requirements.

The USA, the U.K., several other European countries, among them Germany, France and Sweden, and Australia, Canada, Japan, India and South Korea, have imposed tough COVID measures on travellers from China.

Israel, Malaysia, Morocco, Qatar, and Taiwan are also among the countries that have imposed restrictions on travellers from China.

Instead of appreciating the justified apprehensions of these countries, Beijing has described these measures as politically motivated and threatened countermeasures against the countries involved.

Chinese health authorities recently said that more than 12,000 hospitalized people infected with COVID died in seven days through January 19, NHK World-Japan reported.

The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said that 12,658 patients died in medical institutions between January 13 and 19.

According to officials, 681 people died of respiratory failure and 11,977 others died of complications, according to NHK World-Japan report. It is the first time that the Chinese government has updated official death counts in seven days. (ANI)

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