Children's Vaccines Health Center

Vaccine Halves Malaria Infections in Young Children

Next Steps

By 2014, researchers say they will know more about how long protection from the vaccine lasts, how well it works in babies who are 6-12 weeks old, and whether or not children need a booster to maintain their protection.

“There are still important questions to be answered,” Hamel says. “If everything holds up, there’s the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives.”

But because it only offers partial protection, researchers say it will need to be used in conjunction with other measures like mosquito nets, spraying, and medications.

“The future would be to make a second-generation vaccine that would be more efficacious, either building on this one, or there are other vaccines that are in early stages of development that are quite different.  So one or the other,” Hamel says.

“I think if we end up with the first malaria vaccine, that will push everything forward because we will have shown that it can be done,” she says.