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More than 1.7 million doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine have been administered in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two years, reported the World Health Organization (WHO).

About 650,000 children in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi received the malaria vaccine over four doses before two years of age.

The protection provided by the Mosquirix RTS,S malaria vaccine when added to currently recommended malaria control interventions, has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives per year, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

Dr. Kate O’Brien, WHO Director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, commented in a press release issued on April 20, 2021, “This vaccine may be key to making malaria prevention more equitable, and to saving more lives.”

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite. People with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illnesses. Left untreated, they may develop severe complications and die, says the WHO.

Global advisory bodies for immunization and malaria are expected to convene in October 2021 to review RTS,S data and consider whether to recommend more extensive use of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the most recent World malaria report found that progress in reducing malaria has hit a plateau over the last four years. In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million malaria episodes and 400,000 deaths from the disease. 

Over 90% of malaria deaths occur in Africa.

The U.S. CDC says ‘Every year, millions of US residents travel to countries where malaria is present. About 2,000 cases of malaria are diagnosed in the USA annually, mostly in returned travelers.’

The CDC's Malaria Information by Country Table provides detailed information about the specific parts of countries where malaria transmission does or does not occur. It also provides additional information, including the species of malaria that occur there, the presence of drug resistance, and the specific medicines that CDC recommends for use for malaria prevention in each country where malaria transmission occurs on CDC’s Malaria maps.

Seqirus announced the publication of new real-world evidence (RWE) on the company's MF59® adjuvanted, trivalent influenza vaccine (aTIV) in the peer-reviewed medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Study results published on February 19, 2021, indicate aTIV (Fluad) was more effective in reducing influenza-related medical encounters than standard egg-based quadrivalent influenza vaccine (QIVe) and high-dose trivalent influenza vaccine among adults 65 years and older during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 influenza seasons in the USA.

"The use of large, real-world datasets allows for the evaluation of effectiveness on a scale not typically analyzed in a randomized trial," said Constantina Boikos, lead study author and Senior Manager, Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation at Seqirus, in a press statement issued on April 20, 2021.

"This retrospective cohort study, which includes 10.6 million vaccinated U.S. individuals, demonstrates the value that RWE can provide by illustrating the effectiveness of influenza vaccines in real-world settings."

The MF59 adjuvant is designed to strengthen, broaden and increase the duration of the immune response.

This may be important when there is a mismatch between the virus strains included in the vaccine and the strains circulating in the community. The quadrivalent formulation of the MF59 adjuvanted influenza vaccine, which adds B strain to the trivalent formulation, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February 2020 and in Europe in June 2020.

Seqirus is part of CSL Limited (ASX: CSL), a leading global biotechnology company with a dynamic portfolio of life-saving medicines, including those that treat hemophilia and immune deficiencies, as well as vaccines to prevent influenza.

Two new studies published in the journal Blood on April 15, 2021, suggest mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have reduced efficacy in individuals with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma (MM), two types of blood cancer.

Interestingly, the research revealed wide variations in immune response among patients with CLL depending on where they were in their cancer treatment process.

The first study reports that people with CLL had markedly lower immune response rates to the two-dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (Comirnaty) than healthy individuals of the same age. Because clinical trials of these vaccines did not include patients with blood cancers who are at high risk of severe illness and complications from the virus, gauging the vaccine's effectiveness in this population is critically important.

In this study of 167 patients with CLL, only four out of 10 (39.5%) had a positive antibody-mediated response to the mRNA vaccine.

The second blood cancer study reported similar findings after the first dose of the same mRNA vaccine in elderly patients with multiple myeloma.

Evangelos Terpos, M.D., Ph.D., of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Athens, Greece, and colleagues compared outcomes of 48 patients with multiple myeloma and 104 healthy controls at Alexandra Hospital in Athens. The median age of all participants was 83.

On day #22, after the first dose of the vaccine but before the second dose, antibody titers were measured. The median response was 20.6%, neutralizing antibodies for the MM population compared to 32.5% for the healthy controls.

They also wrote that administering a second timely vaccine dose is essential for elderly patients with multiple myeloma to develop an adequate antibody-based response.

These researchers note that the same trends would be expected with other mRNA vaccines, such as the vaccine produced by Moderna, Inc.

For more information about COVID-19 vaccines for immunocompromised people, see the American Society of Hematology's FAQs, last updated on April 5, 2021.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Level 2, Practice Enhance Precaution, Travel Alert on April 15, 2021, for Haiti, a Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic to its east.

The CDC reported, 'Rabies in dogs is increasing in Haiti. And to prevent rabies, travelers should avoid all contact with all dogs and cats while in Haiti.

Furthermore, the CDC says 'access to human rabies vaccine is limited in Haiti, so if you are exposed to rabies, you may not be able to get appropriate treatment. And act quickly if bitten or scratched by a dog or other animal. Wash all bites and scratches immediately with soap and running water for at least 15 minutes.'

And visitors to Haiti should consider the pre-travel rabies vaccine. The preexposure rabies vaccine series is given as three shots over three to four weeks. People who receive the complete preexposure rabies vaccine series still require immediate medical attention after any animal bite or scratch.

Rabies is a fatal but preventable viral disease that affects the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) in mammals, says the CDC. The rabies virus infects the central nervous system. If a person does not receive the appropriate medical care after a potential rabies exposure, the virus can cause disease in the brain, ultimately resulting in death. 

The CDC publishes a country list to review rabies status information for each country on this webpage.