Trial of malaria vaccine makes encouraging start

Doctors in have begun clinical trials of an experimental vaccine for malaria in Burkina Faso and say they are encouraged by the initial results. The vaccine could become generally available within five years if it proves successful. Health Ministry officials said the MSP3 vaccine had been developed by the Pasteur Institute in France and was being tested on a group of 30 healthy people aged between 18 and 40. The trials were being conducted by the National Centre for Research and Training on Malaria (CNRLP), they told a press conference in Ouagadougou on Friday. The 12-month trials began in October, when each participant was given three injections of the vaccine. "The main objective is to see if the vaccine is well tolerated and if it works in a synthesis of several anti-bodies," Dr Sodomou Sirima, director of (CNRLP) said. Encouraging results from initial trials in Switzerland persuaded researchers to try out the vaccine in a zone where malaria is endemic. The CNRLP is working in partnership with the European Malaria Vaccine Initiative (EMVI) and the African malaria Network Trust (AMNET) which has provided 250 million fcfa (US $500,000) to fund the clinical trial in Burkina Faso. "We hope that the vaccine is well tolerated, as is already evident in a few cases, and we also hope to be able to prevent the development of germs within in the human body (as a result of its use)," Sirima said. The doctor said that if the trials proved successful, a malaria vaccine could become available to the general public within five years, but he declined to say how much it was likely to cost. The MSP3 vaccine was developed from a protein on the surface of the malaria parasite. It induces the production of human antibodies that inhibit the growth of malaria parasites. Researchers from Mali and Senegal are working closely with their Burkinabe counterparts on the clinical trial. "I think it is an important stage in the development of the fight against malaria and it is good to stress the usefulness of the study conducted at the local level with a Pan-African and regional interaction," Odile Leroy, clinical director of EMVI Europe told IRIN. Malaria kills 20,000 children under the age of five in Burkina Faso each year, according to Health Ministry statistics. It costs about 6,500 to 8,000 fcfa ($13-16)to treat malaria in Burkina Faso, using the latest drugs. However most of the 12 million inhabitants of this poor and landlocked West African country cannot afford them. A government survey last April showed that 46 percent of Burkina's population lived below the poverty line on an income of less than of $146 a year.