Phase two of the malaria vaccine pilot will see many districts in Ghana participating following the success of phase one. The age limit for the fourth and final jab has been reviewed from 24 months to 18 months. This decision was made known by Dr. Kwame Amponsah Achiano; Programme Manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunization at the Ghana Health Service in a Press Briefing on the Malaria Vaccine Expansion Program organized in Accra on Thursday.
Answering a question on the reason behind this decision, Dr. Achiano said “the malaria vaccine is the only vaccine that has, in the primary series, 4 doses, with the last dose being given when the child has moved from year 2 and is almost in year 3. And as you know it’s usually difficult for people to come back when they’ve gone past a certain age. So, we tabled that to the scientists to study it and advise within the contest of the program whether shifting it forward will be better than keeping it at 24 months so that you’ll have a lot of dropouts. So, they weighed the options and looked at the data, and advised that we could move. And we thought that at 18 months we have two other vaccines that we give Meningitis A Vaccine and the Measles-Rubella vaccine which uptake is quite good. And so, linking it to that we (what we) thought would be better for us in terms of the program. So that we could catch more of the children, and it makes scientific sense. That’s why we’re moving from 24 months”.
The WHO reports that, in 2019, out of the 229 million cases and 409 000 malaria deaths globally, only 11 countries contributed to these statistics with 10 of these countries being in Africa including Ghana. The disease continues to be the highest disease expenditure in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
According to Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director General of the Ghana Health Service, children in Africa are at the highest risk of dying, stating that one child dies from Malaria every minute in Africa, with about half a million deaths recorded annually.
In Ghana, there were 5.7 million confirmed malaria cases and 275 deaths in 2021. This is a significant improvement from the 2016 figure of 1,264 malaria-related deaths.
After 30 years of scientific research, the RTS, S malaria vaccine was introduced in 2019 by the PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative and has Ghana, Malawi, and Kenya as the piloting countries.
Since 2019, the pilot program has seen progress in all 42 districts in the 7 regions selected for Phase 1 of the pilot, which includes the Volta region, Oti region, Upper East, Bono East, Ahafo, and the Western region.
Phase 2 of this program scheduled to start on 1st December 2022 seeks to expand from the current 42 to 93 districts across the 7 selected regions in Ghana. According to Dr. Kuma-Aboagye, the expansion of the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program (MVIP) follows the WHO recommendation for broader use of the vaccine in areas with moderate to high malaria transmission.
According to Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of WHO’s malaria program, despite the low efficacy of the vaccine, it is the most promising at the moment.
“I don’t think we are within reach of a highly efficacious vaccine yet but what we have right now is a vaccine that can be deployed, that is accepted, that is safe and that can have a massive impact in terms of lives saved and episodes of malaria… Given the magnitude of what malaria represents it is probably one of the most impactful vaccines that one could actually be used in Africa right now,” he said.
Sources:
WHO Africa: Private sector support key in achieving Zero Malaria in Ghana, June 2021
Ghana 2021 Annual Malaria Report
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