Tuesday, 5 October 2021

MEDIA ADVISORY

Virtual Press Conference on global advisory bodies' review of RTS,S/AS01 vaccine evidence to inform potential first-ever WHO recommendation on broad deployment of a malaria vaccine for children in sub-Saharan Africa

When: Wednesday 6 October, 2021, 17:30 CEST (Geneva time)

Subject: Virtual Press Conference on SAGE/MPAG global advisory bodies' review of RTS,S/AS01 vaccine evidence to inform a potential WHO recommendation on broad deployment of a malaria vaccine for children in sub-Saharan Africa 

Context: Should there be a WHO recommendation for wider use of the RTS,S malaria vaccine, this would be historic for global health and child health in Africa 

Speakers:

• Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General 
• Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa  
• Dr Alejandro Cravioto, Chair, WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE)
• Professor Dyann Wirth, Chair, WHO Malaria Policy Advisory Group (MPAG)  
• Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist

Available to respond to any technical questions during the Q&A session:

Primary technical focal points:

• Dr Pedro Alonso, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Programme (GMP)
• Dr Kate O’Brien, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals (IVB)
• Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist

Additional technical resources:

• Dr Mary Hamel, Senior Technical Officer, Malaria Vaccines and the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP)
• Dr David Schellenberg, Scientific Advisor, GMP

Join via Zoom:

• Link: https://who-e.zoom.us/j/97586033864
• Passcode: VpCmalaria

Join by phone:

• Webinar ID: 975 8603 3864
• Numeric Passcode for phone access: 5608507718
• International numbers available: https://who-e.zoom.us/u/aeVXEHIMQ

More information

Africa continues to bear the heaviest malaria burden: more than 260 000 African children died of malaria in 2019. The addition of the malaria vaccine, RTS,S to currently recommended malaria control interventions could save tens of thousands of lives annually and drive down child mortality in Africa. The RTS,S vaccine is currently being deployed through a WHO-coordinated pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.  Across the 3 pilot countries, more than 800,000 children have received at least one vaccine dose and 2.3 million doses have been administered since 2019.

Global advisory bodies for immunization and malaria (SAGE and MPAG) will convene on 6 October 2021 to review the full package of RTS,S evidence and consider a potential WHO recommendation for wider use of the malaria vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa. Data generated by the pilot programme and other RTS,S clinical evidence will inform the joint SAGE and MPAG recommendation to the WHO Director-General (DG). The RTS,S SAGE MPAG Working Group has provided a report with their recommendation on wider use of the vaccine.  The report is available online in the SAGE Yellow Book. Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) (who.int)

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

Please ensure you enter your name and media outlet (use name/outlet). Kindly note, only questions from media (one per journalist) are allowed. When you sign in you will be automatically put in the meeting room.

WHO reserves the right to remove any participant whose behaviour causes any disruption. The event is also broadcast on WHO social media channels and you can follow it there.

To ask a question, please click "raise hand" and this will enter you into the queue for questions. (It can be found under the tab: participants.) 

Please make sure you have a microphone connected or active on your computer. Do not ask questions via the chat as we cannot guarantee that we will can incorporate them into the q&a session. 

For translation during the VPC, choices are under "interpretation" or "language interpretation" depending on which version of Zoom you use.

Due to the volume of questions, we are no longer able to take them from phone callers and interpretation is not available via telephone.

Media contacts:
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