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Niger has become the latest West African country to begin rolling out a malaria vaccine in a bid to eradicate the deadly disease, official sources told AFP on Friday.
Niamey launched a mass vaccination campaign on Thursday with the first doses administered in the southwestern city of Gaya, a hotspot for the mosquito-borne disease, Health Minister Garba Hakimi said.
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria will kill more than 600,000 people worldwide in 2022, 95 percent of whom will be in Africa and 80 percent of whom will be children under the age of five.
The antimalarial drug RTS,S, made by British pharmaceutical group GSK, has been added to Niger’s routine immunization calendar and has been approved for 2022, the WHO said in a statement.
Hakimi said the vaccination campaign is expected to reduce child mortality as malaria accounts for 19 percent of child deaths in the country.
The vaccine is estimated to be 75% effective in preventing severe malaria, which causes fever, headache and chills.
Niger records an average of 5 million cases each year, with more than 5,000 deaths.
In addition to this development, Hakimi said Niger will sustain its malaria control strategy by continuing the distribution of free insect-repellent mosquito nets.
They also plan to give the children preventive medication before the rainy season, when the disease is likely to return.
Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic are among the West African countries that have approved malaria vaccines in recent months.
RTS,S is one of two WHO-recommended malaria vaccines for children, along with R21/Matrix-M, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, a major Indian company.
© 2024 AFP
Source: Niger, Latest African Country to Launch Malaria Vaccine (September 21, 2024) Retrieved September 21, 2024 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-niger-latest-african-country-malaria.html
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