Children receive first doses of new malaria vaccine, hailed as major milestone

Children in Ivory Coast received the first doses of a new, relatively cheap malaria vaccine on Monday, a step that has been hailed as a major milestone in the battle against one of the world’s most deadly diseases.

The R21 vaccine, developed by the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India (SII), has been sent to several African countries and will also be administered in South Sudan Tuesday, the University of Oxford said in a statement.

The vaccine costs less than $4 a dose, making it “realistic to roll out in many tens of millions of doses from now on,” and it has high efficacy levels of around 75%-80% in young children, Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, who led the development of the vaccine, said in an interview with BBC Radio on Monday.

Up to 500,000 child deaths could be saved every year with the widespread implementation of R21, alongside its counterpart RTS,S vaccine, according to modeling by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Spread by some types of mosquitoes, malaria is preventable and curable but still killed around 608,000 people around the world in 2022, according to WHO. About 95% of those deaths occurred in Africa, where children under the age of 5 account for around 80% of all malaria deaths across the continent.

The SIII has already manufactured more than 25 million doses and has committed to producing up to 100 million doses a year, a scale that allows the vaccine to remain affordable, according to the statement from the University of Oxford.