vaccines being studied, but they ‘are at least five to ten years behind RTS,S’s development’.”
children between 5-17 months old. In November 2009, the RTS,S third
phase trials were launched officially in Nai- robi, Kenya. Tough the main stakeholders of RTS,S
are GSK Biologicals and PATH-MVI, there are another 12 partners and 14 affiliate part- ners involved, mostly academic institutions. It is important to note that the malaria
vaccine research and development story in- volves a financial grail of immense propor- tions. “Staying the Course? Malaria Research and Development in a Time of Economic Un- certainty,” a report written by Policy Cures, and released in London in June this year, notes that the annual funding for malaria research and development increased from US$121m in 1993 to US$612m in 2009. PATH-MVI has so far spent more than $200m and GSK has spent $300m on RTS,S
and is hoping to splurge another $100m. “Te Gates Foundation has invested
$635m in malaria vaccine research and de- velopment since 1998,” Colleen McCabe of the Gates Foundation says. At a donors’ meeting organised by the
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immuni- sation (GAVI) in London in mid-June this year, some $4.3bn was pledged. Tough hailed by many medical re-
searchers as a milestone in the fight against malaria, the RTS,S trials are now raising a storm within the scientific community over the effectiveness of the vaccine, its side-effects and the overall results, not to mention ethical concerns. Indeed the RTS,S saga is not the first
one for GSK. Over the past year, GSK has been in the news for the wrong reasons. In October last year, a US Federal Court
“The WHO notes there are several malaria
in Boston fined the company $750m for “selling substandard and tainted drugs”. In that same year, a US Senate Committee found that GSK had misrepresented medi- cal data and attempted to intimidate inde- pendent scientists who had raised concerns over its diabetes drug, Avandia, which had been linked to heart attacks. In mid-July 2011, Hong Kong’s Depart-
ment of Health joined the long list of coun- tries to order GSK to withdraw its bacterial antibiotic “Augmentin” after it was found to contain unhealthy levels of plasticisers.
Medical concerns Dr Mae-Wan Ho and Professor Joe Cummins of the London-based Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) first raised safety and ethical concerns over the RTS,S trials some two years ago. Te two scientists aver that “clinical
trials of malaria vaccines on infants raise serious concerns over the safety of multiple vaccinations of the very young”. Tey con- tend that “effective implementation of exist- ing measures have eradicated malaria from many countries without using vaccines.”
New African | October 2011 | 23
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