Cameroon received its first shipment of Mosquirix malaria vaccines manufactured by British drugmaker GSK last week – the 310 000 doses arriving as the nation struggles with the disease that kills more than 600 000 each year globally, mainly under-fives.
Reuters reports that the vaccine, also known as RTS,S, was offloaded at Yaounde’s Nsimalen International Airport, making Cameroon the first African country to receive the vaccine after pilot programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.
Malaria kills nearly half a million children under five every year.
The initial consignment of vaccines will go to 42 out of 203 health districts in the country, with inoculations to begin next month or early next year.
GSK says more than 1.7m children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have already received at least one dose of the shot, and that it would be rolled out in another nine malaria-endemic countries, of which Cameroon is one, from early next year.
A further 1.7m doses are expected to arrive in Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone in coming weeks, the global vaccine alliance Gavi said in a joint statement with the WHO and Unicef.
Other African countries are set to receives doses over the next few months.
The WHO said a second malaria vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, R21/Matrix-M, will become available by mid-2024.
Reuters article – Cameroon receives first shipment of GSK’s Mosquirix malaria vaccine (Open access)
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