The first malaria vaccine - 13th October 2021

The World Health Organisation has approved the use of Africa's first vaccine for malaria. Director Tedros Adhanom said it was a historic day.

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."

Annually, over 400,000 people, most of whom are children in Africa, die of malaria. The disease is passed on by mosquitoes. Before approving its use throughout the continent, the vaccine was successfully tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.

Matshidiso Moeti is WHO Africa's 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."

GlaxoSmithKline developed the vaccine in 1987. However, it has taken more than 30 years for it to now be widely available.

Children in regions with above average levels of malaria will be offered the vaccine. More than half of malaria deaths are in sub- Saharan African countries, where one child dies every two minutes.

Pamela Amboko is a nurse at a centre 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."

For it to work as well as possible, children must receive four doses of the vaccine by two years old.

More new vaccines are being developed by BioNtech and Oxford University.

Although vaccines are costly to develop and distribute, the cost of malaria is even higher. Estimates suggest that malaria costs Africa 12 billion dollars a year, so there is an urgent need for these vaccines across the continent.