Malaria has been prevalent long enough for it to be able to make it to a Bollywood song. But we finally have a breakthrough for us to be able to prevent this infectious parasitic disease that has caused lakhs and lakhs of deaths worldwide, year after year.
On 6 October, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the world's first malaria vaccine – Mosquirix – that has been developed by British pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline in 1987, for malaria prevention in children living in regions with moderate to high transmission of this disease.
Children under five, it has been found out, are the most susceptible to malaria. In 2019, they accounted for 67 percent (2,74,000) of all malaria deaths worldwide.