- Strong safety profile: To date, more than 2.3 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in 3 African countries - the vaccine has a favourable safety profile.
- No negative impact on uptake of bed nets, other childhood vaccinations, or health seeking behaviour for febrile illness. In areas where the vaccine has been introduced, there has been no decrease in the use of insecticide-treated bed nets, uptake of other childhood vaccinations or health seeking behaviour for febrile illness.
- High impact in real-life childhood vaccination settings: Significant reduction (30%) in deadly severe malaria, even when introduced in areas where insecticide-treated nets are widely used and there is good access to diagnosis and treatment.
No one-size fits all
Let us hope this malaria vaccine along with all proven methods to save lives of malaria will be fully rolled out without any delay in every part of the world, driven by the local needs, contexts, and national/ subnational strategies to end malaria. Financial crunch or inequitable rollout or other forms of unjust programming will not be an obstacle in ensuring universal access to all range of healthcare services.
Bobby Ramakant - CNS (Citizen News Service)
(Bobby Ramakant is a World Health Organization (WHO) Director General's WNTD Awardee 2008 and part of CNS (Citizen News Service) and Asha Parivar teams. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyRamakant or read www.bit.ly/BobbyRamakant)
- Shared under Creative Commons (CC)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
