Gavi says nine more African states to receive malaria vaccines

Global vaccine alliance Gavi said on Wednesday 12 countries in Africa would receive 18-million doses of malaria vaccine over the next two years, expanding access to the shots to nine new countries in the region.

Malaria remains one of the continent’s deadliest diseases, killing nearly half-a-million children each year under the age of five. In 2021, Africa accounted for about 95% of global malaria cases and 96% of deaths, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“At least 28 African countries have expressed interest in receiving the RTS,S (malaria) vaccine,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing, adding that a second malaria vaccine was under review for prequalification and if successful, could provide additional supply in the short term.

The roll out is a critical step forward in the fight against one of the leading causes of death on the continent, said the WHO.

Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have been receiving the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine since 2019 as part of a pilot programme funded by Gavi and more than 1.7-million children in the countries have been dosed with it, Gavi, Unicef and the WHO said in Wednesday’s joint statement.

The nine new countries set to receive the vaccine, developed by British drugmaker GSK, are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and Uganda. 

The first doses of the vaccine are expected to reach the new African countries during the last quarter of 2023, allowing them to start rolling out by early next year.

“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, MD of country programmes delivery at Gavi.

“While we work with manufacturers to help ramp up supply, we need to make sure the doses that we do have are used as effectively as possible, which means applying all the learnings from our pilot programmes as we broaden out to a new total of 12 countries.”

Dr Kate O’Brien, WHO director of immunisation, vaccines and biologicals said: “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 prioritised for children at highest risk of dying of malaria. The high demand for the vaccine and the strong reach of childhood immunisation will increase equity in access to malaria prevention and save many young lives. We will work tirelessly to increase supply until all children at risk have access.”

Annual global demand for malaria vaccines is estimated at 40-million to 60-million doses by 2026 alone, growing to 80-million to 100-million doses each year by 2030.

In addition to the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, developed and produced by GSK, and in the future supplied by Bharat Biotech, it is expected that a second vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, developed by Oxford University and manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII), could also be prequalified by WHO soon, the WHO said.

Reuters