Cameroon rolls out world's first malaria vaccine for children

Cameroon is the first country to roll out a new malaria vaccine for children. The West African country hopes to vaccinate approximately 250,000 children over the next year. The vaccines are a crucial additional tool to protect children from severe illness and death.

The mass vaccination campaign, which began on Monday, hopes to enrol another 20 African countries to immunize more than 6 million children by 2025.

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Noteworthy is that across the African continent, there are about 250 million cases of malaria annually, with an estimated 600,000 deaths, mostly of young children. Africa accounts for more than 95% of the world's malaria deaths.

The vaccine Cameroon will use is known as Mosquirix. The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed the vaccine two years ago. However, neither this vaccine nor any of its alternatives can stop transmission, but Mosquirix is very useful in reducing severe infections and hospitalizations, according to WHO.

Malaria mostly spreads to people through infected mosquitoes and can cause symptoms including fever, headaches and chills. Apart from vaccines, other tools like bed nets and insecticidal spraying are critical to contain transmission of the parasitic disease.

As per the reports, the GlaxoSmithKline-produced shot is just about 30% effective and requires 4 doses, with its protection beginning to fade after a few months.

This vaccine was tested in Africa and utilized in pilot programs in three nations. As per GSK, it can only produce around 15 million doses of Mosquirix a year and some experts think that a second malaria vaccine produced by Oxford University and approved by WHO in October will be a more practical solution.

That vaccine will be cheaper and will need three doses as well as India's Serum Institute has also stated that they could make up to 200 million doses annually.

Notably, neither of the malaria vaccines stops transmission, which is why other tools, such as bed nets and insecticidal spraying, will be critical. The malaria parasite mostly spreads to people via infected mosquitoes and can cause symptoms including fever, headaches and chills.