Cameroon received its first shipment of Mosquirix malaria vaccines manufactured by British drugmaker
GSK Plc late on Tuesday, as the nation struggles with the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than
600,000 each year globally.
A batch of 331,200 doses of the vaccine – also known as RTS, S – was offloaded at Yaounde’s Nsimalen
International Airport, making Cameroon the first African country to receive the vaccine after pilot
programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Malaria remains one of Africa’s deadliest diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), killing nearly half a million children under the age of five.
The initial consignment of vaccines will go to 42 out of 203 health districts in the country, Cameroon’s
health minister Manaouda Malachie said.
“We lose many compatriots who die because of this disease. Today, we have a vaccine which comes to
add to the panoply of measures already rolled out,” Malachie told reporters at Nsimalen.
GSK says more than 1.7 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have already received at least one
dose of the shot, and that it would be rolled out in another nine malaria-endemic countries, of which
Cameroon is one, from early next year.
A further 1.7 million doses of the RTS, S vaccine is expected to arrive in Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and
Sierra Leone in coming weeks, the global vaccine alliance GAVI said in a joint statement with WHO and
UNICEF.
