A Medical Miracle in Cameroon

The rollout of the new malaria vaccine in Cameroon has made some Cameroonians hopeful, while others worry about its true purpose. 

On a Wednesday afternoon on 31 March 2021, the screams from twenty-year-old Moussene Flore travelled through the corridors of the Yaoundé Central Hospital, in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Her screams were so loud that a crew of nurses ran through the crowded hallway to the room she was in. There, the nurses met the grieving mother holding her dying baby in her shaky arms and on her knees. With tears rolling down her eyes, Flore whispered the name of her feverish child, who gave a feeble cry and made her last breath. Flore remained crouched against the bed, grief-stricken by the loss of her child.

Flore’s baby was only nine months old when she died. She had been battling malaria for over one week. Flore was broken, inconsolable and in complete despair. She had used up almost all her savings from her petty dress and shoe-selling business to try to save her daughter’s life. ‘She got sicker and sicker. We tried to get all the drugs. I was not ready to lose my baby. It was a difficult period for me. It still hurts. It was a traumatic experience,’ Flore told me in tears.

The trauma was unbearable, but Flore managed to rebuild her life. She underwent therapy to recover from the trauma. A single mother, Flore told me that after she got pregnant for her boyfriend their relationship ended. She was forced to take care of the child alone although the scar of her child’s death has remained etched in her heart.

In 2023, she became pregnant and had a girl. When she first heard the news of a malaria vaccine in the country, she swore to protect her child at all costs and not go through the same ordeal of losing a child in infancy again. She was one of the hundreds of women who rushed to inoculate their children when the vaccination campaign was launched in Cameroon. Her baby, eight-month-old Tchinda Flora Gabrielle, was one of the first children to receive the first dose of the malaria vaccine...