18 million doses of first-ever malaria vaccine delivered to 12 African countries

Over the following two years, the first-ever malaria vaccine will be administered to 18 million people in twelve different African countries and regions. The rollout represents a significant advance in the fight against one of the continent's top causes of death.

The doses have been prioritised to areas with the greatest need, where the risk of malaria illness and mortality among children is highest, using the guidelines established in the Framework for the distribution of limited malaria vaccine supplies.

The Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP), coordinated by WHO and supported by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Unitaid, has been providing the malaria vaccine to Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi since 2019. Since its administration to more than 1.7 million kids in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi in 2019, the RTS, S/AS01 vaccine has been proven to be both safe and efficacious, leading to a significant decline in both severe malaria and child mortality. The malaria vaccine has attracted interest from at least 28 African nations.

Nine additional nations, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, will be able to incorporate the vaccine into their routine immunisation programmes for the first time thanks to the initial 18 million dose allocation, in addition to Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. This distribution round takes use of the vaccination doses that Gavi, vaccination Alliance has access to through UNICEF. The first doses of the vaccine should arrive in countries in the final quarter of 2023, and they should begin to be distributed by early 2024. 

“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, Managing Director of Country Programmes Delivery at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “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.”

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