Twelve African countries are set to receive a total of 18 million doses of the malaria vaccine, RTS,S over the next two years.
Every year, Malaria is responsible for the deaths of nearly half a million children under the age of five. Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have already been receiving the RTS,S vaccine since 2019 as part of a Gavi funded pilot program. The nine new countries set to receive the vaccine are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and Uganda.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the world health organization, claims the RTS,S vaccine is safe and effective. According to a study done by the new England journal of medicine, a study was done in 2016 to test the effectiveness of this vaccine in kids ages 5 to 17. After seven years of follow-up, the vaccine’s effectiveness was only 4.4 percent and even that number waned over time. Still, the World Health Organization approved the first Malaria vaccine in 2021. The first doses are expected to arrive during the last quarter of 2023, allowing for vaccination efforts to begin in 2024.
