The new malaria vaccine helps in Africa but faces a test: Completing all 4 doses

Rain had turned the dirt road into thick mud, but Mabel Djoumessi kept walking with her 9-month-old son, Kenfack, strapped to her back. His malaria vaccination appointment at a clinic in central Cameroon was too important to miss.

For decades, millions of children across Africa have fallen sick from malaria, one of the continent’s deadliest diseases for the young. But Kenfack has never had it, a feat his mother attributes to the recent arrival of a malaria vaccine.

“My other children who have never taken the vaccine frequently fall ill,” Djoumessi said later, sitting with other women cradling babies at Soa District Hospital.

More than two years after Cameroon became the first country to incorporate the RTS,S malaria vaccine into its routine immunization program, health workers say it is reducing severe illness.

But they worry that too few children return for the fourth and final shot, or booster dose, that the World Health Organization says is essential to