Sir: I was glad when I read the announcement by the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, that Nigeria has approved a new malaria vaccine for use in infants from 5 to 36 months old.
The vaccine-R21/Matrix-M is developed by the University of Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. Its approval by the Nigerian authorities is coming weeks after a similar approval by neighbouring Ghana, which is the first country in the world to do so.
The R21/Matrix-M vaccine is the second ever to be approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the first to exceed the WHO threshold of 75 per cent efficacy over 12 months of follow-up.
The vaccine showed a 77 per cent protective efficacy over 12 months in a phase 2b trial involving young West African children, following an initial three-dose course of injections.
According to Adeyeye, Nigeria expects to get at least 100,000 doses of the vaccine in donations soon before the market authorisation will start making other arrangements with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency.
Nigeria suffers the world’s greatest malaria burden. According to the US National Institutes of Health, there are 51 million cases of malaria in the country annually, with 207, 000 reported deaths, while 97 percent of the population (173 million) is at the risk of infection. This vaccine offers hope for Nigeria in its battle to defeat this scourge that has plagued the nation for ages.
Conspiracy theorists have posited that this is an attempt at population control by certain globalist forces. This isn’t a new accusation. They said the same thing about the polio vaccine and the Covid-19 vaccine. It didn’t stop the efficacy of those vaccines. And it achieved its intended results while putting paid to the lies of the naysayers. Same would happen with the malaria vaccine.
With the financial support of the international community, incidences of malaria will be reduced to the barest minimum in future generations. We would have a healthier Nigeria that every citizen would be proud of.
•Peter Ovie Akus,
akuspeter@gmail.com