After Covid-19, WHO and Gavi to deploy Africa’s first malaria vaccine

#Ivory Coast : After having strongly contributed to the access of African countries to anti-Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance will do it again with the first vaccine against malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of children every year.

After Covid-19, the WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an international organization created in 2000 with the aim of facilitating access to vaccines in poor countries, are looking into the deadliest pandemic in Africa, know malaria. The two organizations have just opened a procedure for African countries to start applying, starting this week, for funding and support for the deployment of the new “RTS,S” malaria vaccine.

And to deploy this new vaccine developed by the British laboratory GSK, Gavi has released nearly 160 million dollars to facilitate access for children at high risk of the disease in Africa to this new vaccine. This envelope, which is spread over the period 2022-2025, will first affect the countries which served as laboratories for the vaccine trials, in particular Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. These three countries can submit their applications for access to the new vaccine before September 13. As for the other countries of the continent, they will be able to submit an expression of interest in anticipation of a second window at the end of the current year.

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“RTS,S” is a vaccine developed by the British laboratory GSK which acts against Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly parasite worldwide and the most prevalent in Africa, transmitted by infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. The vaccine, already tested since 2019 in the three aforementioned countries with more than 2.3 million doses administered, has given convincing results and therefore represents great hope for African children.

The vaccine is, according to WHO, the only one that has so far shown efficacy in significantly reducing the number of cases of malaria, including severe malaria in children, by reducing severe forms of malaria by 30%. disease.

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Recall that in 2021, after giving its approval to the “RTS, S” vaccine, the WHO recommended the massive deployment of this antimalarial vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and in areas at risk. “It is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and the fight against malaria,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The use of the antimalarial vaccine could thus make it possible to save several hundreds of thousands of young people each year. Indeed, in 2020, the number of deaths caused by malaria in the world was estimated at 627.000, of which 95% in the WHO African Region. And children under the age of 5 accounted for 80% of all deaths in this region.