Kenya is among 12 countries across different regions of Africa that are set to receive 18 million doses of the first-ever malaria vaccine over the next two years.
The first doses of the vaccine are expected to arrive in countries during the last quarter of 2023, with countries starting to roll them out by early 2024.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) in a statement, the rollout is a critical step forward in the fight against one of the leading causes of death on the continent, and the allocation round will make use of the supply of vaccine doses available to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, via UNICEF.
Apart from Kenya, other countries that will receive the doses are Ghana, Malawi, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.
“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, Managing Director of Country Programmes Delivery at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
He noted that while they work with manufacturers to help ramp up supply, there is a need to make sure the doses that they have are used as effectively as possible, which means applying all the learnings from their pilot programmes as they also broaden out to a new total of 12 countries.
Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi have since 2019 been delivering the malaria vaccine through the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP), coordinated by WHO and funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and United.
The RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, the first vaccine recommended to prevent malaria in children, has been administered to more than 1.7 million children in the three countries and has been shown to be safe and effective, resulting in both a substantial reduction in severe malaria and a fall in child deaths.
In Kenya, the three-year-old pilot implemented in September 2019 made the vaccine available to children in eight counties in the Western and Nyanza regions, targeting 1.2 million children.
The other nine countries, apart from Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi, will be introducing the vaccine into their routine immunization programmes for the first time.
UNICEF Associate Director of Immunization Ephrem T. Lemango said that nearly every minute, a child under 5 years old dies of malaria, and for a long time, these deaths have been preventable and treatable.
“The roll-out of this vaccine will give children, especially in Africa, an even better chance at surviving. As supply increases, we hope even more children can benefit from this life-saving advancement,” he said.
Dr. Kate O’Brien, WHO Director of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, said that the malaria vaccine is a breakthrough to improve child health and child survival, and families and communities, rightly, want this vaccine for their children.
“This first allocation of malaria vaccine doses is prioritized for children at highest risk of dying of malaria,” she said, adding that the high demand for the vaccine and the strong reach of childhood immunization will increase equity in access to malaria prevention and save many young lives.
According to a report by the Ministry of Health in Kenya, Malaria remains a major public health problem and accounted for an estimated six per cent of outpatient consultations in 2021. It remains one of Africa’s deadliest diseases, killing nearly half a million children under the age of 5, and accounting for approximately 95 per cent of global malaria cases and 96 per cent of deaths in 2021.
WHO says that vaccine allocations have been determined through the application of the principles outlined in the Framework for Allocation of Limited Malaria Vaccine Supply that prioritise those doses to areas of highest need, where the risk of malaria illness and death among children are highest. At least 28 African countries have expressed interest in receiving the malaria vaccine.
Annual global demand for malaria vaccines is estimated at 40 to 60 million doses by 2026 alone, growing to 80 to 100 million doses each year by 2030. Gavi has recently outlined its roadmap to support increasing supply to meet demand.
By Wangari Ndirangu
