In early October, the World Health Organisation endorsed the use of the world’s first malaria vaccine in Africa. Words like “historic” and “ground-breaking” were used. Perhaps with good reason. The jab could save thousands of children’s lives, especially in Africa.
According to the WHO, in 2019 alone, 409,000 people died of malaria, 94 percent of them in Africa. More than 270,000 of the victims were children under five. One sense of just how bad that number is, is that after 19 months of Covid-19, even accounting for the incompleteness of the data, as at the end of September, the overall deaths due to coronavirus in Africa were 211,853.
