Africa's Cameroon rolls out world's first malaria vaccine program for children

Africa begins its battle with malaria, this time to win, as Cameroon, on Monday, became the first country in the continent to routinely administer children new malaria vaccine shots.

Africa accounts for 95 per cent of world’s malaria death. Each year, there are about 250 million cases of the parasitic disease, including 600,000 deaths, mostly in young children.

Now, Cameroon, a Central African nation, aims to vaccinate about 250,000 children this year and next year.

Officials have described the campaign as a milestone in the decades-long effort to curb malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, on the continent.

“The vaccination will save lives. It will provide major relief to families and the country’s health system,” the Associated Press cited Aurelia Nguyen, chief program officer at the Gavi vaccines alliance, as saying.

Gavi vaccines alliance is helping Cameroon secure the shots.

Gavi is working with 20 other African countries to help them get the vaccine and that those countries will hopefully immunize more than 6 million children through 2025.

Cameroon will use the first of two recently approved malaria vaccines, known as Mosquirix. The vaccine was endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) two years ago, acknowledging that even though it is imperfect, its use would still dramatically reduce severe infections and hospitalisations.

The GlaxoSmithKline-produced shot is only about 30 per cent effective, requires four doses and protection begins to fade after several months. The vaccine was tested in Africa and used in pilot programs in three countries.

GSK has said it can only produce about 15 million doses of Mosquirix a year and some experts believe a second malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University and approved by WHO in October might be a more practical solution. That vaccine is cheaper, requires three doses and India’s Serum Institute said they could make up to 200 million doses a year.

Gavi’s Nguyen said they hoped there might be enough of the Oxford vaccines available to begin immunizing people later this year.

Neither of the malaria vaccines stop transmission, so other tools like bed nets and insecticidal spraying will still be critical. The malaria parasite mostly spreads to people via infected mosquitoes and can cause symptoms including fever, headaches and chills.

With inputs from AP