The vaccination alliance organisation Gavi has sent 846,000 doses of the R21 malaria vaccine to Nigeria.
Speaking at the ceremonial introduction on Thursday, Ali Pate, coordinating minister of health, said the arrival of the malaria vaccine is a big step forward in the government’s efforts to ensure that every kid is disease-free.
He said:
“Every child that has full course of the vaccine has an opportunity to live a life of health.”
“A child that is immunised against the disease has an opportunity to live a life free of that disease. So it’s a miracle, but it’s also a source of opportunity.
“The vaccines are delivered to populations for free. I want to urge all well-meaning Nigerians to take advantage of the limited availability and the fact that it’s a valuable commodity and bring their wards where they have the opportunity, to make sure they are protected with these vaccines.
“And to discount misinformation for uninformed people who sometimes have their own agendas or may not understand what they’re talking about.”
He stated that the “safe and efficacious” malaria vaccines would be provided first to the states with the highest disease load, specifically Kebbi and Bayelsa.
Muyi Aina, director general of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), stated that the agency will establish an enforcement team and communicate the date and site of vaccination administration in due time.
Aina stated that approximately 140,000 doses are expected in the next months as the goal is to make one million vaccines available in the first batch.
“This is the first batch out of a million doses. It’s important that we know that we are prioritised as a country,” he said.
“The vaccine is not excessively available globally, but Nigeria remains a very important country. So thank you to our partners — Gavi, WHO, UNICEF, and a lot of the others.
“We have a high burden of malaria in Nigeria, and we all know that. We have made some progress but continue to have up to 50%, 52% prevalence in states. That’s not acceptable.
“We have been deploying a slew of interventions which have shown some progress.
“But the vaccine is a very important addition that we are hoping to deploy very strategically as a country. The experts have advised that depending on the time that we have enough to go around, we prioritise the highest priority locations.
“And that is why we are taking a phased approach, starting from Kebbi and Bayelsa states.”
In October 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved R21/Matrix-M, which was created by Oxford University scientists to prevent malaria in children.
The R21 vaccine is WHO’s second malaria vaccine recommendation, following the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine in 2021.
Earlier this year, Cameroon began the world’s first systematic rollout of the RTS/AS01 malaria vaccine.
The country provided free vaccinations to all infants in four doses.