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Ghana is the first country to approve a new vaccine for malaria called R21. Scientists say the vaccine will change the world.
The vaccine was tested in Burkina Faso, where researchers said it was up to 80% effective.
The World Health Organization is also considering approving the vaccine, but first, a large study with almost 5,000 children needs to finish. The results of the study have not been formally published yet.
Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority has approved the vaccine for children aged between five months to three years old. Other African nations and the World Health Organization are also reviewing the data from Ghana.
The Serum Institute of India is planning to produce 100-200 million doses of the vaccine every year and is building a vaccine factory in Accra, Ghana. Each dose will cost just a couple of dollars.
Malaria causes the death of around 620,000 people every year, mostly young children. The R21 vaccine is expected to greatly reduce that number in the next few years.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where the vaccine was invented, says the R21 vaccine will help the overall goal of eliminating malaria.
Vocabulary
- Approve – officially agree; accept; to say “yes”; authorize
- Vaccine – a medicine/substance that protects you from getting sick
- Malaria – a disease that you can get from being bitten by a mosquito
- Scientist – a person who studies science or the natural world; researcher
- Test – to do something to learn if it is safe, works correctly, etc.; try out
- Researcher – a person who does research; a person who studies something to find new results
- Effective – when something works well and does what it is supposed to do
- Consider – to think about carefully; to take ‘something’ into account when thinking or deciding;
- Study – the activity of examining/studying something in detail to discover new information; research; investigation
- Result – outcome; findings; conclusion; answer;
- Formally – done in an official way
- Publish – to print in a book or document for everyone to read; to announce;
- Authority – a government organization that controls and manages activities in a certain field or type of work
- Nation – Country; a group of people who live in the same place
- Review – to look at something again to check if it is good or not; to study something
- Produce – to create or make something
- Dose – how much/the amount of medicine you should take at one time
- Factory – a large building where things are made or produced
- Cause – make something (usually bad) happen; create
- Expect – to think something will happen; forecast; predict; suppose
- Reduce – to make less; make smaller; decrease; bring down; shrink
- Professor – a teacher at a university
- Director – boss, leader, head, manager
- Invent – to make something new that no one else has made before
- Eliminate – to remove or get rid of something or someone
Quiz
Discussion Questions
- What are some other vaccines that you believe should be developed to address global health challenges?
- What role do you think pharmaceutical companies should play in making life-saving vaccines accessible and affordable to people in developing countries?
- How do you think the approval of the R21 vaccine in Ghana will affect other African nations?
Original Story
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