Museveni pushes for a malaria vaccine at global meeting

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | President Museveni has expressed concern over the continued absence of a malaria vaccine despite years of research into the disease control and prevention.

Speaking at a meeting organized by Harvard University on Wednesday where China and Sri Lanka shared best practices on how they have been able to eradicate the disease, Museveni said he had launched a full war against plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria, but wondered why it has been impossible to have a vaccine yet pathogens such as SARS COV-2 virus that only emerged recently have vaccines.

Museveni said that Ugandan scientists have been looking for a chemical called beta-Propiolactone for the development of a vaccine from elsewhere, only to establish that the chemical is got from locally available materials which shows a need for African countries to collaborate in research if science is to be successful.

He noted that while scientists have been coming up with therapeutics over the years, the challenge is that the pathogen soon starts defeating them.

However, just before Museveni spoke, the World Health Organisation Regional Director for Africa, Dr Moeti Matshidiso had told scientists that researchers are studying the possibility of having a malaria vaccine made using the Messenger RNA technology, which is the latest science that has been used to develop Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.

She said these studies will launch next year but also added that the RTS,S malaria vaccine which is the first globally to show some effectiveness at 40 per cent is only still being used under pilot programmes in Kenya and Malawi among others.

Noting that actually, the RTS,S vaccine can offer 30 percent protection to children who are severely affected in endemic countries, Moeti says countries like Uganda that have adopted a multi-pronged approach towards elimination of malaria even without a vaccine through among others involving the private sector players are registering some progress.

Meanwhile, former Vice President Dr Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, who is also a trained medical epidemiologist says countries are missing the actual picture of how malaria is ravaging them giving an example of malaria-related deaths where new mothers who become anaemic due to malaria are recorded among maternal deaths when they die. The same she says happens to children who die of malaria and are never captured.

For her, for countries in Africa to defeat malaria, they will need to use accurate data and involve communities more when it comes to enforcement of prevention interventions.

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