A new medicine for malaria - 13th October 2021

World Health Organisation Director Tedros Adhanom has made an important announcement. The WHO has supported the first malaria vaccine for Africa.

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."

Malaria is carried by mosquitoes. It kills over 400,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa.

The vaccine was tried in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi where it was a success.

Matshidiso Moeti is WHO Africa Director.

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."

The vaccine was first produced by GlaxoSmithKline in 1987. And now, 30 years later, it is ready to be used.

It's recommended for children in areas with a lot of malaria. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most malaria deaths. One child dies of malaria there every two minutes.

Pamela Amboko is a nurse who is giving the vaccine in Kenya.

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."

To work successfully, children need to have the vaccine four times before they are two years old.

BioNtech and Oxford University are developing more vaccines.

Vaccines aren't cheap to provide. But, malaria is even more expensive. Malaria costs Africa an estimated$12 billion a year. So, a way must be found to get Africa the vaccines it needs.