This New Malaria Vaccine Will Save Nigeria, N480b

Following the successful trial of a new malaria vaccine currently developed and tested in the United States, the National Coordinator, National Malaria Control Programme, Dr Nnena Ezeigwe , has said that the innovation could save Nigeria over N480 billion, the sum it costs the citizens to treat malaria annually.


A statement by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) described it as a welcome development.

The organization, in a statement made available to LEADERSHIP, disclosed that the about 300,000 annual malaria deaths in the country, a lot of them children under five years of age, could be prevented when the vaccine hits the market.

Ezeigwe urged everyone to get involved in the fight against malaria, adding that the disease was costing the country over N480 billion in prevention and treatment costs.

She said, “Malaria is a leading cause of under-five mortality in Africa (18 per cent) and accounts for 40 per cent of public health expenditure. We can use that money for something else to build roads and bridges.”

The malaria vaccine has become the first to provide 100 per cent protection against the disease, confounding critics and surpassing any other experimental malaria vaccine tested, according to a report by Nature News.

The vaccine, developed and tested in the United States, will now be tested further in clinical trials in Africa, starting at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania.  The report stated that if those are successful, the vaccine may be licensed as early as four years from now.

The results, published in Science, demonstrate for the first time the concept that a malaria vaccine can provide a high level of protection, raising cautious optimism amongst researchers.

So far, the new vaccine has only been tested in the Phase I safety trial, in a small study on 40 volunteers. Also, the vaccine was given intravenously, making it difficult to administer in mass vaccination campaigns or to give to children.