Cameroon receives first shipment of GSK’s Mosquirix malaria vaccine
CNN/Reuters/YAOUNDE, November 22 – While Cameroon battles the mosquito-borne disease that kills over 600,000 people year, the first shipment of Mosquirix vaccines, made by British pharmaceutical company GSK Plc, arrived late on Tuesday.
Cameroon became the first African country to receive the vaccine—also known as RTS,S—after experimental programmes in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. A batch of 331,200 pills was offloaded at Yaounde’s Nsimalen International Airport.
Worldwide, about half a million children younger than five die from malaria every year, making it one of the leading causes of death in Africa.
Healthcare Minister Manaouda Malachie of Cameroon announced that 42 out of 203 health districts will get the first shipment of vaccines.
This disease claims the lives of a great number of our fellow citizens. Vaccines are just one more tool in the arsenal of measures that have been put into place, as Malachie informed the media at Nsimalen.
A health official, who wished to remain anonymous, told Reuters that immunisations will start either next month or at the beginning of next year.
According to GSK, around 1.7 million children in three African nations—Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi—have already gotten the shot. Beginning early next year, it will be distributed to nine more countries with a malaria problem, including Cameroon.
According to a joint announcement by the global vaccination alliance GAVI, WHO, and UNICEF, an additional 1.7 million doses of the RTS,S vaccine are anticipated to be sent to Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger, and Sierra Leone in the near future.
Doses will be distributed to other African countries in the coming months.
According to Juliette Haenni, a spokesperson from UNICEF, this is a watershed moment in the fight to safeguard children.
“The people that matter the most are the kids. “We are targeting the six to twenty-four month olds, because they are the most vulnerable,” Haenni stated.
Midway through 2024, a second malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, created by the University of Oxford in Britain, will be made available, according to the World Health Organisation.
