As part of efforts to lessen malaria’s effects on children, the Ghana Health Service has commenced distributing newly introduced malaria vaccines in 136 districts in 11 regions.
The vaccine’s introduction is now part of Ghana’s routine child immunization program. This will lead to the vaccination of about 200,000 children between the ages of six months and 18 months each year.
For children to be fully protected, the vaccine doses will be administered in four schedules: to children at the ages of six months, seven months, nine months, and 18 months.
This initiative follows the successful implementation of the malaria vaccines—RTS and S/AS01—in two pilot projects, that started in 2019 and ended on December 31, 2023.
The first phase covered all communities in 42 districts in various regions, such as Volta, Oti, Central, Upper East, Bono East, and Ahafo.
Based on the encouraging outcomes of the first phase exercise, the second phase was expanded to cover 51 other districts within the same regions that were not covered during the first phase.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the vaccine as a second option for preventing malaria in high-transmission areas, including West Africa.
Malaria Vaccines: Third Phase Rollout
The Deputy Director of the GHS in charge of Disease Control, Dr Kwame Amponsah-Achiano, said the third phase, which had just commenced, would cover 43 districts. These include districts in the Upper West, Savannah, Northern, and Western North regions. He spoke with the Daily Graphic on the exercise in Accra last Wednesday.
He said, “The third phase takes care of 43 districts within the four new regions, and this will add to the existing 93 districts, which have all their communities implementing the malaria vaccines. This is a subnational introduction, meaning that it is not all the regions, but eventually, within the next three to five years, we will have covered the rest of the country.”
Future Expansion of Malaria Vaccine Program
The Expanded Programme of Immunization of the GHS’s Programme Manager, Dr. Amponsah-Achiano, stated that the WHO had recommended the vaccine be used more widely throughout the West African sub-region, especially in areas where the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum was endemic.
“And so for us as a country, and for other countries that started the pilot, we were doing a phased introduction of the vaccine,” he said.
Dr. Amponsah-Achiano assured that eventually, malaria vaccination would go national, depending on the burden of malaria in the regions that were most challenged.
The national exercise would be carried out in collaboration with the National Malaria Elimination Programme, which was still part of the GHS, he explained.
Impact of Vaccine Administration
Speaking on the impacts of the previous two phases of the exercise, Dr Amponsah-Achiano said data from the three implementing countries showed a decrease in child mortality, irrespective of the cause of death.
“Deaths among children reduced by more than 13 percent, and this is quite remarkable for the implementing countries,” he said.
Dr. Amponsah-Achiano said for Ghana, statistics had shown that malaria had been on the decline, especially in areas where malaria vaccines were being used as an add-on to existing interventions.“So, where the malaria vaccines are added to the existing interventions such as the use of insecticidal bed nets, indoor residual spraying, the seasonal chemoprevention, and prompt diagnosis and management of malaria, the decline is even drastic,” the Deputy Director said.
