By Maggie Fick

NAIROBI (Reuters – Africa will begin negotiations with the World Health Organization to obtain the first approved vaccine against malaria for Africa as soon as possible.

John Nkengasong spoke a day after the WHO said https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-experts-back-using-malaria-vaccine-african-children-2021-10-06 RTS,S – or Mosquirix – developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:) should be widely given to children in Africa. Experts believe the recommendations could be a significant advance in fighting a disease that claims 25 000 lives each year among African children.

Nkengasong (director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) stated that they will engage with GAVI and WHO over the next few days in order to first understand the availability of this vaccine.

He advised donors to avoid a zero-sum “where we neglect malaria vaccines but fund COVID vaccinations”.

Because the price per dose of the vaccine is unknown and production times are not yet known, he said that it wasn’t clear when it will become available to many African countries with malaria.

GSK has committed to producing 15 million doses annually of Mosquirix every year until 2028, at a cost not exceeding 5%.

According to a WHO global market study, the demand for malaria vaccines is expected to rise to 50 to 110 millions doses each year by 2030 in countries with high to moderate transmission.

Nkengasong stated that the WHO recommendation to widen the use of the malaria vaccine must be celebrated. He called malaria an African killer. Nkengasong noted that malaria, particularly in Africa’s children, will have likely killed more Africans by 2021 than COVID-19.

Mosquirix is now 30 years old.

Since 2019, 2.3 Million doses have been administered by a WHO-coordinated pilot program in Africa.

GAVI will examine in December whether or not to fund the vaccine programme.