Malaria vaccine roll out begins - 13th October 2021

Giving approval to the world's first malaria vaccine, for extensive use in Africa, WHO director Tedros Adhanom declared it to be a momentous day.

Tedros Adhanom: "As some of you may know, I started my career as a malaria researcher, and I longed for the day that we would have an effective vaccine against this ancient and terrible disease. And today is that day, a historic day."

The mosquito borne disease malaria is responsible for in excess of 400,000 deaths a year, most of which are children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rollout of the vaccine was backed following a successful pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.

Weighing in is WHO Africa Director, Matshidiso Moeti.

Matshidiso Moeti: "Today's recommendation therefore offers a glimmer of hope for the continent. We expect many more African children will be protected from malaria and grow into healthy and productive adults."

Taking over 30 years since it was first developed in 1987 to get to the point of widespread distribution, the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine has now gained approval for its use in children across sub-Saharan Africa and other areas with worrying rates of malaria transmission. Sub-Saharan countries account for the majority of deaths from malaria, while also seeing one child die of malaria every two minutes.

Nurse Pamela Amboko administers the vaccine at a Kenyan health centre.

Pamela Amboko: "The vaccine has done a great job to the children, it's actually done a great deal of improvement. Our children before this used to come with severe malaria, with convulsions, and even anaemia because of frequent attacks of malaria, but now because of the immunisation, most of them are not coming in that state of anaemia. So actually, we are better off with the vaccine."

Acting against plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of five malaria parasites, the vaccine needs to be administered in four separate doses before a child reaches the age of two, otherwise it will lose effectiveness.

BioNtech and Britain's Oxford University are developing additional vaccines that are expected to come online soon. Nevertheless, funding their distribution will be a massive financial hurdle to overcome, but compared with the cost of malaria, running at about $12 billion annually, the need to distribute the vaccine is more pressing.