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SOA, Cameroon, Jan 22, 2024 (AFP) – Cameroon on Monday launched the first malaria vaccination programme to be offered nationwide and as a matter of routine, AFP journalists saw, in a step the WHO has described as “historic”. The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 600,000 people a year, mainly in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. Children under five years old account for more than 80 percent of deaths on the continent. Following a […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Around 18 million doses of the first malaria vaccine will be delivered to 12 African countries by 2025, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Vaccine Alliance said Wednesday. “Malaria remains one of Africa’s deadliest diseases, killing nearly half a million children under the age of five every year,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing. In 2021, 96 percent of the world’s malaria deaths occurred in Africa. The Mosquirix […]
by Fred Ooko SAIYA, Kenya (AFP) — Lucy Akinyi’s three children were infected with malaria so often she would be at their local health clinic in western Kenya every other week getting them treated. When offered the chance to protect her children with the world’s first vaccine against the deadly parasitic disease, Akinyi jumped at the chance. More than 100,000 children in malaria-endemic western Kenya have received the new vaccine against the disease, which kills […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Pandemic-related disruptions caused tens of thousands more malaria deaths in 2020, the World Health Organization said Monday, but added that urgent action had averted a far worse scenario. In a fresh report, the UN health agency found that Covid-19 had reversed progress against the mosquito-borne disease, which was already plateauing before the pandemic struck. There were an estimated 241 million malaria cases worldwide in 2020 — 14 million more than a […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, the first against the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly African children. The decision followed a review of a pilot programme deployed since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in which more than two million doses were given of the vaccine, first made by the pharmaceutical company GSK in 1987. After reviewing evidence from those […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A new approach using existing medicines to prevent malaria has been shown to reduce severe cases of parasitic disease among infants by more than 70 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a study. The “dramatic” results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, came from combining booster shots of an antimalarial vaccine ahead of the rainy season together with preventative drugs. Malaria kills more than 400,000 people […]
FRANKFURT, Germany (AFP) — Germany’s BioNTech, which developed a coronavirus vaccine with US giant Pfizer in record time, said Monday it aimed to start trialling a malaria vaccine next year using the same breakthrough mRNA technology. If successful, the vaccine could be a crucial step in the fight against the mosquito-borne disease, which kills more than 400,000 people a year — mainly young children in Africa. “We will do whatever it takes to develop a […]
by Margioni BERMÚDEZ BARCELONA, Venezuela (AFP) — Luz Martinez has caught malaria three times, the last of which was when she was six months pregnant with her fourth child. Like many Venezuelans, she fears malaria more than Covid-19. In her dusty neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona, in the eastern state of Anzoategui, some people have contracted malaria up to 20 times. “I gave it to my 12-year-old girl and also to my other child […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Two years into a malaria vaccine pilot scheme, more than 650,000 children have been immunised across Kenya, Ghana and Malawi, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Global advisory bodies for immunisation and malaria are expected to convene in October to review data on the vaccine and consider whether to recommend using it more widely. The RTS,S vaccine is the only existing jab shown to reduce malaria in children. It acts against […]
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse Researchers on Thursday reported the first clinical evidence that drug-resistant mutations of the parasite responsible for malaria are gaining ground in Africa. Experts have long worried about the emergence of drug resistance across the continent, which accounted for more than 90 percent of malaria deaths worldwide in 2019. A new study published in The Lancet appears to confirm those fears. In clinical trials, the disease lingered longer in […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — The anti-malarial drug chloroquine can be administered in France to patients suffering from the severest forms of the coronavirus but only under strict supervision, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Monday. Citing a ruling adopted after a meeting of France’s high public health council, Veran said the drug could not be used to treat milder cases of the illness. Some researchers have said chloroquine shows great promise as a treatment, though […]
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AFP) — FIFA are organizing an event to raise funds and awareness to tackle AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, their president Gianni Infantino told AFP on Friday. Infantino said the idea was in response to Thursday’s announcement that governments, philanthropists and private firms had pledged just over $14 billion for a plan to save 16 million lives. The money was promised at a replenishment meeting in Lyon, France, of the Global Fund to Fight […]
