Geneva, 2 December 2021 - The RBM Partnership to End Malaria welcomes today’s decision by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to fund a new malaria vaccine programme, which will support countries to implement the newly approved RTS,S malaria vaccine for children under 5 in Africa. The deployment of RTS,S as a complementary paediatric malaria prevention tool, used in combination with other proven tools, is an important addition to the fight against malaria.

Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, CEO of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, said: “This is the first major investment in a new tool that can help save more lives from malaria, at a time when COVID-19 and other humanitarian crises are making the fight against this deadly disease even more challenging.

“This significant influx of new investment from Gavi will not only help save the lives of thousands of African children, but will also provide the private sector with a crucial motive to scale up the RTS,S rollout and invest in promising future malaria vaccines, such as BioNTech's mRNA vaccine. We now call on leaders to step up investment to accelerate the development and delivery of more effective, transformative tools to combat the ever-evolving malaria parasite".

Recently approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) for widespread use among children in Africa, the RTS,S/A01 vaccine is the world’s first malaria vaccine shown to provide partial protection against malaria in children under five, and is the first-ever vaccine against a human parasite recommended for use by WHO.

This significant investment by Gavi, alongside new investment from BioNTech to research, develop and manufacture a malaria mRNA vaccine bring new funds, energy and promise to the malaria fight.
 

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