Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Wednesday said it was “a historic moment” debuting a tool that could save the lives of tens of thousands of children in Africa each year.

Malaria is among the oldest known and deadliest infectious diseases.

Malaria kills about half a million people each year, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa — among them 260,000 children under age 5.

The new vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, rouses a child’s immune system to thwart Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of five malaria pathogens and the most prevalent in Africa.

The vaccine is not just a first for malaria — it is the first developed for any parasitic disease.

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