A major trial of the world's first malaria vaccine is getting underway in Malawi.
It's being hailed as a 'landmark pilot programme', with two other African countries - Ghana and Kenya - to introduce the vaccine to children up to two years of age in the coming weeks.
It's hoped around 360,000 children per year will receive the vaccine across the three countries, with an initial focus on areas with moderate-to-high malaria transmission.
Around 250,000 children die from malaria in Africa every year, with children under five at greatest risk.
The malaria vaccine is known as RTS,S, and clinical trials have shown it could prevent around four in ten malaria cases.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We have seen tremendous gains from bed nets and other measures to control malaria in the last 15 years, but progress has stalled and even reversed in some areas.
"We need new solutions to get the malaria response back on track, and this vaccine gives us a promising tool to get there.
"The malaria vaccine has the potential to save tens of thousands of children’s lives."
Officials will use the pilot programme to gather data about the impact of the vaccine, which will inform WHO policy recommendations on the vaccine.
The jab is being described as a "complementary malaria control tool" - alongside traditional prevention methods such as insecticide-treated bed nets.
Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, and around 219 million cases of the disease were recorded in 2017 alone.
There were 435,000 deaths related to the disease in the same year.
