Healthcare workers have described as normal malaria vaccine side-effects that include fever in babies and have encouraged parents and guardians to seek medical assistance when they notice the same.
Speaking in an interview yesterday, National Expanded Immunisation Programme manager Dr. Mike Chisema said it is expected that vaccines cause fever and other side effects.
“We always advise parents to be aware [of the possible side effects], considering that people react differently,” he said.
Malawi introduced malaria vaccine into its routine immunisation programme for children from five months to 22 months old. However, some parents and guardians have reported that it was causing high fever in some young patients.
To date, more than 400 000 children in 11 districts had received at least one dose of the malaria vaccine as of last year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In an interview yesterday, Nkhata Bay District Health Office senior health promotion officer Christopher Singini said they have not reported cases of high fever but parents are advised to expect mild fever as the immune system reacts to the vaccine and the fever goes away after a few hours.
on April 23 2019 at Mitundu Community Hospital. | Ministry of Health
He said they encourage mothers to breastfeed and monitor the child as well as to report to a health facility if the fever does not go away.
In a separate interview, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences professor of public health Victor Mwapasa said some children may experience pain or swelling on the injection site and they may also get fever as the immune system reacts to the vaccine.
“The pain, swelling or fever may occur in some people but not in others because we are all different and our genes are different,” he said.
Mwapasa, who was one of the researchers that worked on the malaria vaccine programme, said it is important for parents to report any side effects of the vaccine and seek help for the child.
He said: “Reporting helps the Ministry of Health to gather enough data to see whether the vaccine is working as intended or whether it may be causing other problems that were not anticipated.
“The reports trickle down to the Pharmacy and Medicines Regulatory Authority which has legal authority to maintain, suspend or withdraw drugs or vaccines.”
Following a pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that started in 2019, WHO in 2021 recommended the widespread use of the malaria vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2022, Malawi expanded the malaria immunisation programme to be part of the under-five routine immunisation programme in 11 of the country’s 28 districts.
They include Karonga, Nkhata Bay, Mchinji, Lilongwe, Ntchisi, Balaka, Mangochi, Machinga, Chikwawa, Phalombe and Nsanje.
Data shows that Malawi recorded 2 252 malaria deaths last year, translating in six deaths per day while the number of cases increased by 44 percent from 6.5 million in 2023 to 9.4 million in 2024.
Under the Malawi National Malaria Strategic Plan 2023-2030, the country aims at eliminating malaria as a public health concern by the year 2030.
