By Xinhua
NAIROBI,July 7 (Xinhua) -- Twelve African countries will receive 18 million doses of malaria vaccine for children under the age of five, which will be rolled out in the next two years, multilateral institutions said on
Thursday.A joint statement from the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the deployment of 18 million malaria vaccine doses, also called RTS, S/AS01, for the 2023-2025 period, aims to protect children from severe illness and death.Kenya, Ghana and Malawi have since 2019 administered the malaria vaccine to more than 1.7 million children through the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program coordinated by the WHO, GAVI, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Unitaid, a global health
lobby.The malaria vaccine has so far proved to be safe and effective, leading to asubstantial reduction in severe malaria and fatalities among children
below five years.
A
health worker shows a rapid diagnostic test kit during a one-day
malaria health camp in Kampala, Uganda, April 26, 2021. (Photo by
Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua)Nine
more countries -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and
Uganda -- will receive the malaria vaccine and introduce it in their
routine immunization programs for the first time."This
vaccine has the potential to be very impactful in the fight against
malaria, and when broadly deployed alongside other interventions, it can
prevent tens of thousands of future deaths every year," said Thabani
Maphosa, Gavi's managing director of country programs delivery.Maphosa
added that multilateral institutions have partnered with manufacturers
to help ramp up the supply of malaria vaccine doses in the high-endemic
African nations.Malaria
kills nearly half a million children below five years annually in the
sub-Saharan African region, which accounted for an estimated 95 percent
of global malaria cases and 96 percent of deaths in 2021, according to
the WHO.Ephrem
T. Lemango, associate director of immunization from UNICEF, noted that
nearly every minute, a child under five years old dies of malaria in the
continent, adding that the vaccine rollout will reduce severe cases and
fatalities.
A staff member sprays insecticides on the interior walls of a house in Ruhango District in southern Rwanda, April 21, 2023. (Rwanda Biomedical Center/Handout via Xinhua)A
total of 28 African countries have expressed interest in administering
the malaria vaccine, and multilateral partners have developed a
framework for addressing equity amid limited supplies.Kate
O'Brien, director of the WHO's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and
Biologicals, said scaling up malaria immunization will improve child
survival in Africa. ■
