Visibly dejected, Fati waits outside a private hospital in Niger where her son is hospitalized with malaria. For many people like her in Africa, developing a vaccine against the disease that kills a child every two minutes “will be a huge relief.”
“Malaria kills our children and it doesn’t forgive the parents. The children miss school and the parents cannot work in the fields. When the vaccine arrives, it will be a great relief”, explains Fati to AFP in Niamey, capital of Niger.
The disease has been known since antiquity and manifests itself with fever, headache and muscle pain, and then with cycles of chills, more fever and sweating.
If not treated in time, malaria, particularly the parasite that causes it in Africa (Psalmodium falciparum), can be fatal.
In early October, the WHO (World Health Organization) recommended the large-scale use for children of the RTS,S vaccine manufactured by the British pharmaceutical group GSK, the only one that has so far shown efficacy in significantly reducing cases, including the most serious .
Africa concentrates 90% of the world’s malaria cases and 260,000 children under the age of five die each year from the disease. Since 2019, Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have started using the vaccine in some regions.
“I’m very hopeful! My 11-month-old daughter received the vaccine and everything was fine. I’m sure it’s a way to increase the life expectancy of our future generations. We want Ghana to quickly expand the program across the country,” he celebrated. Hajia Aminu Bawa, in the Gomoa region, south of the country.
“When I heard about the vaccine, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Some tried to change my mind and said it was a new vaccine that could kill my baby, but they spoke without knowing it. Everyone should vaccinate their children against malaria,” he said. Prince Gyamfi, mother of a six-month-old boy in the same region.
Until now, methods of prevention against the disease transmitted by the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes were essentially based on the use of mosquito nets and preventive treatments not always accessible to the population.
But this is insufficient, says Dr. Djermakoye Hadiza Jackou, coordinator of the PNLP (National Program for the Fight against Malaria in Niger).
“We received the WHO announcement with great joy. It is something we were really looking forward to. The vaccine will serve as a complement to other prevention strategies that we have already adopted”, he explains.
In neighboring Burkina Faso, another vaccine developed by the British University of Oxford in collaboration with the American Novavax also showed promising efficacy in a 2019 clinical trial.
But for the doctor Wilfried Sawadogo, who works in Ouagadougou, the vaccine should not replace other prevention models such as the installation of mosquito nets or the preventive administration of antimalarial drugs with prolonged action during the rainy season, a method widely used since 2014 in the country with 11 million cases annually.
“This campaign makes it possible to reduce by 25-30% the cases of death linked to malaria”, he explains.
But there are questions to be resolved about the vaccine and its cost.
“Who will finance it? Is the international community ready? And will the amount of vaccines be enough?” asks Serge Assi, a physician and researcher at the Pierre Richet de Bouaké institute (center of Côte d’Ivoire).
“The Democratic Republic of Congo does not have malaria vaccines available in its territory,” recalls the director of the country’s vaccination program, Dr. Elisabeth Mukamba.
“Now it’s up to Africa to get this technology, its knowledge, to produce vaccines instead of importing them. It’s a bigger gamble,” said Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomic Research and Infectious Diseases in Ede (Southwest Nigeria ).
The fight against malaria also involves work on infrastructure, because the rainy season with its floods usually causes an increase in cases.
“If we die of malaria in Africa, it’s because we live in total unhealthy conditions. Those who talk about unhealthy conditions are talking about mosquitoes,” says Ousmane Danbadji, a sanitation specialist in Niger.
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