Nurses sang and celebrated the start of their country’s vaccination campaign as little Noah Ngah received the vaccination. “Some parents are hesitant, but I know that vaccinations are good for children,” said his mother Helene Akono, who also wanted to have Noah’s twin sister vaccinated.
The hospital in Soa, around 20 kilometers from the capital Yaunde, is one of many vaccination centers set up in the African country with its 28 million inhabitants. The vaccinations are carried out with the agent RTS,S, which is the first vaccine against malaria recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In an international joint campaign, more than 300,000 RTS,S doses were transported to Cameroon in November. It then took another two months to organize the start of the current vaccination campaign. Now all children up to six months of age should gradually be vaccinated; the vaccinations are free. This is mainly funded by the international vaccination alliance Gavi.
The start of the world’s first large-scale vaccination campaign, which was preceded by pilot projects in Ghana and Kenya, among others, is being celebrated by experts as “historic”. Federal Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) spoke in Berlin of “a ray of hope that millions of people have been waiting for a long time.”
“In Cameroon, 30 percent of doctor visits are due to malaria,” said Aurelia Nguyen from the vaccination alliance Gavi. “The fact that we now have a preventative such as vaccination will ease the burden on the health system and lead to fewer hospitalizations and deaths.” After the start of the vaccination campaign in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone will soon follow.
Malaria is caused by parasites transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. The disease poses a major health risk in Africa, especially for young children, especially as resistance to common malaria drugs is becoming increasingly common.
In 2021, 247 million malaria infections were counted worldwide and 619,000 patients died. 95 percent of global infections and 96 percent of deaths have been recorded in Africa.
