Anti-malaria vaccine trials start

Malian and United States medical experts have begun testing a new anti-malaria vaccine in Mali, one of Africa's endemic countries, the US-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said on Tuesday.

The trial seeks to confirm the safety and effectiveness in adults of the vaccine called FMP-1, which has already been successfully tested in Kenya and the United States, a statement from the institute said.

Kenya is malaria endemic while the United States of America is not.

During this first phase, 40 volunteers adults between the ages of 18 and 55 would be enrolled for the experimental phase. They would each receive three injections over two months.

Half of the volunteers will receive the malaria vaccine and half will serve as a control group who will receive a licensed rabbies vaccine, NIAID said. All the volunteers will be monitored for a year to assess their resistance to the disease.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria is a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted from person to person through the bite of a female mosquito.

The disease kills one million people per year, 90 percent of them in Africa. Globally it causes at least 300 million cases of acute illness each year and is the leading cause of deaths in young children. Pregnant women are the main adult risk group in most endemic areas of the world.

The disease costs Africa more than US$ 12 billion annually.

In 1998, a global initiative called Roll Back Malaria was launched with the goal of mobilising funds to reduce the number of cases worldwide by the year 2010. The United Nations named the period 2002-2010 as the decade against malaria.