5 July 2023 Joint News Release
- In response to high demand for the first-ever malaria vaccine, 12 countries in Africa will be allocated a total of 18 million doses of RTS,S/AS01 for the 2023–2025 period
- Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme countries Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will receive doses to continue vaccinations in pilot areas
- Allocations were also made for new introductions in Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and Uganda
“This vaccine has the potential to be very impactful in the fight against malaria, and when broadly deployed alongside other interventions, it can prevent tens of thousands of future deaths every year,” said Thabani Maphosa, Managing Director of Country Programmes Delivery at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “While we work with manufacturers to help ramp up supply, we need to make sure the doses that we do have are used as effectively as possible, which means applying all the learnings from our pilot programmes as we broaden out to a new total of 12 countries.”