“The arrival of the RTS,S malaria vaccine was a landmark moment; Ghana, Kenya and Malawi were the first countries in the world to offer it to their populations as part of a pilot project launched in 2019, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended it for wider use in 2021.

Early studies indicated that the vaccine had a 13% drop in all-cause mortality, and a comprehensive new study of the last four years of vaccine roll-out published in The Lancet has confirmed this figure. That translates to roughly one in eight deaths prevented…

The study tracked 158 clusters across the three countries, with 79 areas introducing the vaccine in 2019 and 79 serving as comparison areas that received it later. Surveillance was built on a network of more than 26,000 local reporters who notified researchers of child deaths in their communities, followed by home visits to confirm details.

The findings carry particular weight because of how the study was designed. Clusters were randomly assigned, baseline characteristics were balanced, and coverage of other interventions, including bed-nets, routine vaccines and care-seeking for fever, remained similar across implementation and comparison areas throughout the four years.

This means, say the researchers, that the drop in deaths can be  ‘confidently attributed’ to the vaccine itself rather than to other shifts in malaria care.”

From Gavi.

“For adults aged 50 years or older, an investigational messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccine (mRNA-1010) is superior to standard-dose licensed vaccines for preventing influenza-like illness, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine…

Overall, 20,350 participants received mRNA-1010 and 20,353 received the standard-dose comparator. The researchers found that 2.0% and 2.8% of the recipients of mRNA-1010 and the standard-dose comparator, respectively, had RT-PCR-confirmed, protocol-defined influenza-like illness, corresponding to a relative vaccine efficacy of 26.6% and meeting the criteria for noninferiority, superiority, and higher-level superiority. Solicited adverse reactions occurred more often with mRNA-1010 than the standard-dose comparator; they were mainly mild-to-moderate and transient. Overall, 2.2% and 1.9% of recipients of mRNA-1010 and the standard-dose comparator, respectively, had serious adverse events.”

From Medical Xpress.

“Authorities report an unprecedented decline in malaria rates at the national level. At a press briefing in February 2026, Health Minister Robert Kargougou said the total number of recorded malaria cases fell from 10,805,020 in 2024, to 7,329,278 in 2025, a decrease of 32%. Over the same period, deaths fell from 3,523 to 1,979, a drop of 44%. Among children under five, cases declined by 39%, while mortality fell by more than 40%.”

From Gavi.

“Balachandran and his team published the results of the Phase 1 clinical trial last year. At the time, the patients, all of whom had early-stage disease before they joined the trial, had only been tracked for just over three years, and it was unclear whether the immune response would last and lead to the patients living longer, he said. New data collected during the trial’s six-year follow-up period shows that it may. Those findings will be presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting in San Diego.

Six years after treatment, Gustafson and six others who responded to the treatment are still alive, along with two of the eight people who did not respond. Two of the responders, including the one who died, had a cancer recurrence; Gustafson’s cancer has not come back.”

From NBC News.