Hundreds of children under the age of five are to be VACCINATED in western Kenya, as the health ministry rolls out its Malaria programme to FIVE COUNTIES there.

The “RTS,S” vaccine was first introduced in 2019 in EIGHT COUNTIES which have a high malaria burden, helping to bring down the number of children being hospitalized for malaria or dying of it.

The World Health Organization says the vaccine should be rolled out across all of sub-Saharan Africa, but the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, says it can only produce about 15 million doses annually.

Malaria, the mosquito-borne illness kills more than 400,000 people each year, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.