The global fight against malaria yesterday took a stride forward as Cameroon launched the world’s first routine vaccination program against the mosquito-borne disease that is projected to save tens of thousands of children’s lives per year across Africa.
About 40 years in the making, the WHO-approved RTS,S vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline is meant to work alongside existing tools such as bed nets to combat malaria, which in Africa kills nearly half a million children under the age of five each year.
After successful trials, including in Ghana and Kenya, Cameroon is the first country to administer doses through a routine immunization program that 19 other countries aim to roll out this year, global vaccine alliance Gavi said.
Photo: AP
About 6.6 million children in these countries are targeted for malaria vaccination through 2024-2025.
“It’s a historic day. Up to now we had done a small-scale pilot in three countries — Kenya, Ghana and Malawi — to understand how to use the vaccine. Now in Cameroon we are going straight into routine immunization,” Gavi chief program officer Aurelia Nguyen said.
“For a long time, we have been waiting for a day like this,” Mohammed Abdulaziz of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said at a joint online briefing with the WHO, Gavi and other organizations.
The urgency is clear. Disruptions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, rising insecticide resistance and other issues have hindered the fight against malaria in the past few years, with cases rising by about 5 million year-on-year in 2022, the WHO said.
Overall, more than 30 countries on the continent have expressed interest in introducing the vaccine and fears of a supply squeeze have eased since a second vaccine, R21, completed a key regulatory step in December.
Rolling out the second vaccine “is expected to result in sufficient vaccine supply to meet the high demand and reach millions more children,” WHO Director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Kate O’Brien said at the briefing.
R21, developed by the University of Oxford, could be launched in May or June, Nguyen said.
Some experts have expressed skepticism, saying attention and funding should not be drawn away from the wider fight against the age-old killer and the use of established malaria-prevention tools like bed nets.
Health experts at the briefing said the rollout was accompanied with extensive community outreach to combat any vaccine hesitancy and to emphasize the importance of continuing to use all protective measures alongside the vaccines.
Additional reporting by AFP
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