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hello and welcome to science in five i'm
bismita gupta smith we are talking today
about the first ever malaria vaccine
with dr pedro alonso welcome pedro
talk to us please about the first
malaria vaccine and its potential
we are at a historical point in time
a first malaria vaccine is being
recommended for broad-scale use
among african children to help prevent
malaria
in in this in this group
it is the first
vaccine to reach
this stage of a formal policy
recommendation and therefore this makes
it a historical point in time the
vaccine
contributes to
our toolkit
and therefore it will be
used in combination with
the other tools that that we have
and the vaccine
reaches this stage
at a critical point in time in our fight
against malaria
malaria is probably the largest killer
of humans along history
we have seen amazing progress over the
first 15 years of this century
unprecedented progress which resulted in
in more than 7 million deaths
averted
more than 1.5 billion malaria cases
averted
but the stark truth is that for the last
four or five years we have seen
this progress plateauing
and plateauing at an unacceptably high
high level we still have more
than 200 million malaria cases in people
living in malaria endemic countries
every year we have more than 400 000
deaths
due to malaria every year and the brunt
of the disease and death is carried by
africa
and mostly
by african african children pedro which
is the group that should receive this
vaccine and talk to us about the safety
of this vaccine this is a vaccine
developed
in africa
with very strong engagement of african
scientists and aimed to prevent malaria
disease and death among african children
vaccine has now been used in over 800
000
children as part of our pilot
implementation programs it builds
on previous
work phase three trial
data that were also examined by a
stringent regulatory authority the
european medicine agency that issued
a positive recommendation on on this
vaccine
and we are reassured on the good
safety profile of of these vaccine this
is a safe
efficacious vaccine that can contribute
to
safe
lives
prevent disease
pedro please speak to us about the
challenges of
rolling out this vaccine in the midst of
a pandemic
what we have found over the last
two and a half years of rolling out
in pilot programs the malaria vaccine in
three african countries is indeed that
there is very strong demand
there is
a very good acceptability by the
populations and
that even in the face of covet 19
we reached very high levels of coverage
within a short period of time
and that speaks of of of the fundamental
value and acceptance
of vaccines in general
and of a malaria vaccine particularly in
africa moving forward
i believe that there are a number of
steps that we'll still need to go
through
the funding to secure
the supply of these vaccines to african
countries still needs to be
worked out
but we are optimistic we cannot imagine
a situation where
international solidarity will not
generate the financial resources to
allow this vaccine to reach those
that need it
and in the face of kovite 19
the resilience of health systems and
particularly of vaccine delivery
mechanisms
also in africa
gives us hope
that
this vaccine will be able to
to get those ultimate beneficiaries
young african children thank you dr
pedro alonso that was science in five
today
until next time then stay safe stay
healthy and stick with science
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