Cameroon: The world’s first malaria vaccine was rolled out in Cameroon, reportedly marking a “transformative chapter in Africa’s public health history.”
Children in the West African nation will receive 662,000 doses of the RTS,S vaccine. The first to receive vaccinations following the medication’s successful trials in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi in 2019 and 2021.
It follows successful trial programmes in Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi, where Unicef reports that the vaccine reduced malaria deaths in children of qualifying age by 13 percent.
In Africa, where 95 percent of malaria-related deaths occur, the majority of which affect children under five, this signifies a step up in the fight against the disease.
According to public health experts, public outreach will be essential to the vaccine’s success in building public trust, encouraging parents to return for all four doses, and helping people understand that the vaccine works best when combined with other interventions like sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets.
Director of the WHO’s department of immunisations and vaccines Kate O’Brien stated that RTS,S, or Mosquirix, would save tens of thousands of lives according to trial results.
This year, 19 more African nations intend to roll out the vaccine in an attempt to vaccinate 66 million children. For Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger, and Sierra Leone, deliveries are scheduled.
The British pharmaceutical company GSK spent thirty years researching and developing the RTS,S vaccine.
The World Health Organisation, which gave the vaccine approval, celebrated the vaccine’s introduction in Cameroon as a turning point in the worldwide battle against the illness spread by mosquitoes.
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