The Federal Republic of Nigeria has been excluded from the list of the 12 African countries that would be receiving 18 million doses of the first-ever malaria vaccine.
The World Health Organisation, the Gavi, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Vaccine Alliance had made the announcement on Wednesday, July 5.
According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, Malaria was one of Africa’s deadliest diseases that kills almost half a million of children under five years every year.
Before this initiative, the Mosquirix (RTS,S) vaccine, created by British pharmaceutical giant, GSK, had already been administered to over 1.7 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, as part of a pilot program.
It had resulted in a substantial reduction in severe malaria cases and child deaths were also reported to have declined, showing that the vaccine was safe and effective.
As a consequence, nine additional countries were selected to benefit from the vaccine, according to the WHO, UNICEF and the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi).
The nine countries include Benin, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Cameroon, the DR Congo, Uganda, Niger and Sierra Leone.
The first batch of vaccines are surmised to arrive in the last quarter of 2023 and will be deployed in the early months of 2024.
Meanwhile, a second malaria vaccine, the R21/Matrix-M created by Oxford University and manufactured by the Serum Institute in India, SII, is still under assessment for pre-qualification by the WHO.
This a standard procedure developed by the WHO to ensure that the health products being supplied to low-income countries were safe and effective.
WHO, UNICEF and Gavi expects that the global demand for malaria vaccines is expected to reach 40-60 million doses yearly by 2026 and about 80-100 million doses annually by 2030.
Reports had shown that in 2021, 96% of the world’s malaria deaths happened in Africa.
Malaria is a disease that is transmitted to humans by the bites of the female anopheles mosquitoes. It is common among the tropic and sub-tropical regions in the world.
