22, January 2024
Biya regime launches world’s first nationwide malaria vaccination programme 0
The world’s first routine vaccine programme against malaria has started in Cameroon, in a move projected to save thousands of children’s lives across Africa.
The symbolic first jab was given to a baby girl named Daniella at a health facility near Yaoundé on Monday.
Every year 600,000 people die of malaria in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Children under five make up at least 80% of those deaths.
Cameroon is offering the RTS,S vaccine free of charge to all infants up to the age of six months old.
Patients require a total of four doses. Health officials say these will be given at the same time as other routine childhood vaccines to make it easier for parents.
It comes after successful pilot campaigns in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi – where the vaccine caused a 13% drop in malaria deaths in children of eligible age, says Unicef.
The jab is known to be effective in at least 36% of cases, according to US researchers, meaning it could save over one in three lives.
While the rollout is undoubtedly a relief and a life-saver, its relatively low efficacy rate means that it is not a “silver bullet”, argues Willis Akhwale at End Malaria Council Kenya.
But for medics it is an important additional tool in the fight against malaria alongside mosquito nets and malaria tablets. Using all three together potentially gives children 90% protection from malaria, one UK-led study estimates.
“We have a capacity to considerably reduce the number of cases and deaths from malaria and accelerate the elimination of the disease,” Cameroonian doctor Shalom Ndoula, who helped to lead the vaccine rollout in his country, told BBC Newsday.
Development of the RTS,S vaccine has taken 30 years of research by the British drug-maker GSK.
The World Health Organization, which approved the vaccine, hailed the launch in Cameroon as a historic moment in the global fight against the mosquito-borne disease.
There was another breakthrough earlier this month, when Cape Verde became the first sub-Saharan African country in 50 years to be officially declared malaria-free by the global health body.
‘Safe, effective and free’
Fears and doubts among some Cameroonians about the safety and efficacy of the doses have raised concerns about vaccine hesitancy.
“When people say we are being used as guinea pigs, that’s not particularly true,” Wilfred Fon Mbacham, who is a Cameroonian king and also a professor of public health biotechnology specialising in malaria, told BBC Newsday.
“We as scientists have to do much more to educate the public on what it is, and the benefits it has, so that we can calm their fears.”
Vaccination official Daniele Ekoto at Monday’s launch told the BBC she was reassuring mothers after administering doses to their children, insisting that “it’s a vaccine that’s safe, effective and free”.
But for others the benefits are obvious.
“I decided to vaccinate my child to avoid malaria. It’s a bad thing and when it affects a child, they can easily die,” one mother told the BBC at the same vaccination centre in Soa, near Yaoundé, where Monday’s launch happened.
In 2021, Africa accounted for 95% of malaria cases globally and about 96% of related deaths.
“I have prayed and waited all my life for this vaccine”, Mr Mbacham told the BBC.
The WHO says Cameroon records about six million malaria cases every year, with 4,000 deaths in health facilities – most of them children below five.
Six-month-old children in 42 districts with the greatest rates of morbidity and mortality will receive four doses until the age of two.
Twenty other countries aim to roll out the programme this year, according to the global vaccine alliance, Gavi. Among them are Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone.
There is already a big demand for doses, but only about 18 million are available for allocation before 2025, according to Gavi.
It falls short of what is needed by the countries the vaccine alliance has recommended for approval.
The anticipated rollout of a second jab – R21 – developed by Oxford University, is expected to significantly increase the number of doses available for use.
This is to be manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, which aims to make 100 million doses per year, so long as it successfully passes the regulatory approvals following its recommendation for use by the WHO last year.
Source: BBC
25, January 2024
Schools reopen in Southern Cameroons 0
In the early morning in Buea, the chief town of Cameroon’s war-torn English-speaking region of the Southwest, 18-year-old Carine and her younger sister, Judith, are getting ready for school. But for these teenagers, it has been a long time coming.
Judith is 15 but is still in primary school. Carine was supposed to be in university, but she just started secondary school. They are among hundreds of thousands of children in the country’s two English-speaking regions of the Northwest and Southwest, who have resumed school after five years.
Carine and Judith had to stay at home since 2017 due to a persistent crisis in the regions, where separatists have been clashing with government forces in a bid to secede from the French-majority Cameroon and create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.
“I feel so happy I am able to attend school after five years. This is a dream come true,” Carine said in Buea, asking for her family name and school not to be published.
Judith and Carine fled the locality of Ekona in the region with their family in 2022 amid renewed fighting and relocated to Buea where they enrolled in school last year. Still reeling from her ordeal in the war-torn zone, Judith said she felt especially fortunate to go to school because some of her friends have not been able to study due to the conflict.
“Running up and down from bush to bush was difficult. Now I am focused on my studies to fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor,” said Judith who also asked for her family name not to be mentioned.
Fighting between government forces and armed separatists has made it too dangerous for formal lessons in the Anglophone regions of the Central African nation. Separatists enforced a school boycott in the troubled regions since 2016 to protest against what they described as educational injustices against English-speakers. The school boycott left more than 800,000 children out of school, according to UNICEF.
Now, schools are gradually reopening in safer areas of the regions after Cameroon’s military liberated more than 100 villages and schools from rebel occupation.
“In 2022, we expected 429 secondary schools to reopen, but only 233 functioned. In 2023, almost all the schools reopened, and this year, attendance has improved significantly,” said Hannah Mbua Etonde, chief of secondary education in the Southwest region.
“We are seeing students coming back to school in their numbers; many schools are also gradually reopening. The situation is generally improving,” said Adolph Lele Lafrique, governor of the Northwest region, adding that since the start of the year, there has been little or no attack on teachers, students and schools in the region.
The armed conflict is not over, but some separatist leaders are now encouraging children to return to school, saying a boycott is no longer a weapon of their struggle for independence. Parents here said they’re breathing a sigh of relief after the call for school resumption by the separatist leaders.
Augustine, whose name has been changed for safety reasons, teared up thinking of the bombing that leveled his son’s primary school in Batibo, a locality in the Northwest region but is determined to ensure the eighth-grader continues his studies. “My son’s school is not there anymore, but he has started school here in Buea. The most important thing is for our children to learn. Almost all schools are now functioning, and parents are no longer afraid to send their children to school,” he said.
“My humble plea as a parent to the administration is that security should be guaranteed 100 percent, 24/7 for our kids to go to school,” said Michael Njie whose child started school in 2022 after spending four years at home.
Improving school attendance is a top priority for the government given the war’s long-term social and economic impact on the country, its children, and the willingness of those who fled to return. Across the regions, authorities have been repairing damaged schools and building new ones.
As Cameroon joins the rest of the world to celebrate International Day for Education, officials have been visiting schools in the troubled regions to assure parents everything is under control and that their children will be safe.
“We just want to learn. Let them keep the guns away from schools and students,” Judith said.
By Haggai Fung Achuo