FILE PHOTO: A displaced woman cares for her child who suffers from acute diarrhea while a volunteer performs a malaria test under a microscope in the makeshift health center of internally displaced persons at a camp in Bijombo, South Kivu Province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on October 10, 2020. – On Thursday, October 31, 2024, the DR Congo administered its first malaria jabs against the mosquito-borne disease that kills tens of thousands of Congolese a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Agence France-Presse / ALEXIS HUGUET
KINSHASA, DR Congo — The DR Congo on Thursday administered its first malaria jabs against the mosquito-borne disease that kills tens of thousands of Congolese a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
This makes the Democratic Republic of Congo the 15th African country to offer malaria vaccines, with the continent bearing the brunt of the disease’s deaths, according to the WHO statement.
In DR Congo, malaria causes more than 24,000 deaths and affects over 27 million people a year, mainly children under five, according to a 2022 report by the Ministry of Health.
In June, the country received 693,500 doses of the R21/Matrix-M vaccine, which is recommended by the WHO for inoculating children aged between since and 23 months against the disease.
On Thursday, the first jabs were given to infants of at least six years of age in the town of Mbanza-Ngungu in the western province of Kongo Central.
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In its malaria control plan for 2024-2028, the DRC aims to protect 80 percent of at-risk populations by distributing insecticide-treated mosquito nets and extending preventive treatment to pregnant women and infants, the statement added.
Malaria is a disease transmitted to humans by the bites of several species of mosquitoes.
It kills more than 600,000 people around the world every year, according to the WHO, with Africa accounting for 95 percent of the deaths.
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Every minute a child dies of malaria on the continent, according to the WHO.
Malaria vaccines were introduced for the first time in April 2019 in Malawi, with Kenya and Ghana following suit.
The WHO says that those rollouts have demonstrated that the vaccine substantially reduces cases of the disease.