The day is historical: after the green light on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, from the World Health Organization, the long-awaited malaria vaccine is ready to be put on the market and Kenya will be one of the three countries in the world to be able to first evaluate its effectiveness, about which WHO no longer has the slightest doubt. According to WHO, the RTS,S vaccine will gradually reduce malaria mortality by 40% and significantly reduce severe cases.
This is the effect of four years of pilot programs and experimentation on samples of people in the areas most at risk, with Kenya, Malawi and Ghana as the key areas to understand whether two decades of studies, developments, waiting, bureaucracy and other obstacles have really led to a decisive breakthrough against the mosquito-borne disease that kills between 400 and 700,000 people a year, mostly African children.
"We have lived with malaria for centuries and centuries - said the President of the World Health Organization, Ethiopian Tedros Ghebreyesus - and we have cultivated for years the dream of a vaccine against malaria, a dream that seemed impossible to achieve. Today, the RTS-S vaccine, which cost more than 30 years to develop, changes the course of public health history."
Much of the credit for Kenya's ability to get the vaccine right away goes to the Kenya Medical Research Centre (KEMRI), one of the most trusted government agencies (and proving it even in the challenging Covid-19 era). In September 2019, Kenya had launched a pilot testing program on children over 6 months of age in the Homa Bay region of Lake Victoria, where malaria claims the most lives in the country. The outcomes were considered satisfactory and reliable, so it was decided to consider Kenya one of the first states that will have the opportunity to commercialize the vaccine.
In a period in which the attentions of the world were focused on another type of vaccine that was of greater interest to Western countries, we are only waiting for the WHO directives on how and where to administer the saving, long-awaited product that will be marketed by GlaxoSmithKline under the name of Mosquirix, starting of course with the youngest.