South Korea-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an international organisation with a mission to discover, develop, and deliver safe, effective, and affordable vaccines for global health, and the Madagascar Institute for Vaccine Research (MIVR) at the University of Antanararivo, have launched a mass vaccination campaign against typhoid in the Arivonimamo and Antananarivo-Atsimondrano districts of Madagascar.

This campaign is a component of the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine Introduction in Madagascar (TyMA) project, which seeks to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of Vi-CRM₁₉₇ (trade name TYPHIBEV, manufactured by Indian firm Biologicals E Limited), a typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) pre-qualified by the World Health Organisation, in a high-burden setting as a step toward integrating the vaccine into routine vaccination programmes in Madagascar. The campaign aims to provide a single dose of Vi-CRM₁₉₇ to approximately 60,000 children between 9 months and 16 years of age.  

The TyMA TCV campaign follows more than a decade of typhoid fever surveillance in Madagascar and other sub-Saharan African countries through IVI’s Typhoid Fever Surveillance in Africa (TSAP) and Severe Typhoid in Africa (SETA) programmes, which yielded unprecedented data on the burden of disease in the region.

In addition to generating safety and effectiveness data of Vi-CRM₁₉₇ specific to a defined population and setting, the TyMA study aims to assess the impact of vaccination on antibiotic use (AMU) and consumption between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. With AMU driving the development and spread of bacterial infections resistant to antimicrobial treatments—or, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), this study posits that disease prevention through vaccination may be a safe and effective measure to reduce AMU and AMR.