Browsing: vaccines in africa

Kenya has become the first country in Africa, and globally, to launch a national malaria youth army.  

In the global arena, it has been a constant battle to eradicate malaria and efforts have been channeled towards this initiative. 

Below is a global map and the malaria prevalence in each country. 

Countries with zero indigenous cases over at least the past three consecutive years are considered to have eliminated malaria.  

In 2019, China and El Salvador reported zero indigenous cases for the third consecutive year and have applied for World Health Organisation (WHO) certification of malaria elimination; also, Iran, Malaysia and Timor Leste reported zero indigenous cases for the second time. 

In 2017, the WHO warned that the global response to the malaria menace had reached crossroads. This was a wake-up call from the organisation that more needs to be done to further reduce the spread of the disease. 

The …

Kenya and Uganda are among the countries selected for the Phase 1 clinical trial of an HIV vaccine.  According to the Globally Relevant AIDS Vaccine Europe-Africa Trials Partnership (GREAT), the first dose will be given in Lusaka, Zambia while Kenya and Uganda will receive the vaccines in a few weeks.  

Dr. William Kilembe, project director of the Center for Family Health Research in Zambia (CFHRZ) and trial principal investigator, said that international partnerships are crucial in developing and evaluating HIV vaccine candidates in countries and communities where HIV vaccines will ultimately have the greatest public health impact. 

“CFHRZ is proud to be part of the consortium evaluating HIVconsvX and to deliver the first dose of this experimental HIV vaccine in the HIV-CORE 006 trial,” he said.  

The trial will see 88 healthy, HIV-negative adults, aged 18-55, who are considered not to be at high risk of infection, receive one …

Three countries in Africa are being considered for regional vaccine production, the World Bank International Finance Corporation has declared. The three states include South Africa, Senegal, and Rwanda where investment towards setting up vaccine production is at an advanced stage.  

Why is this necessary now? 

When Covid-19 struck the continent and governments rushed to bring in vaccines to manage the global health crisis, the roll out of vaccines within the continent was marred by delays, scarcity and uncertainties.  

In Kenya for instance, when the first consignment came in, there was a wave of uncertainty that swept across the country especially because the government could not ascertain the availability of the second dose of the vaccine. However, 358,700 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine have just been received in Nairobi in a bid to help the government administer the vaccines to the population and manage the crisis. 

Meanwhile Zimbabwe has run …

With $571 million in loan money at stake, Tanzania that has until now withheld all Covid-19 data has announced that it will now make the statistics public. Question is, if withholding the data stayed public panic and allowed production to continue?  How will announcing the data affect the country’s economy? Will the public continue to operate business as usual or will fear impede productivity?

There is no doubt that Tanzania is one of the few countries in the world that had positive economic growth all through the worst of Covid-19 outbreaks. Granted the rate of growth fell, but it remained on an upward trajectory nonetheless. Many pundits have attributed this positive economic growth to the country’s ‘lax’ border control and zero lockdowns during the entire time.

Further still, Tanzania stopped reporting cases of Covid-19 on April 29, 2020 when the country had 509 infections, 183 recoveries and 21 deaths. Further, …