Children receive first doses of new malaria vaccine in major milestone

CNN
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Children in Ivory Coast received the first doses of a new, relatively inexpensive malaria vaccine on Monday, a move that was hailed as a major step in the fight against one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

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

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

According to World Health Organization (WHO) modelling, up to 500,000 child deaths could be prevented each year through widespread implementation of the R21 vaccine, alongside its RTS,S counterpart.

Spread by certain types of mosquitoes, malaria is preventable and curable, but it still killed about 608,000 people worldwide in 2022, according to the WHO. About 95% of those deaths occurred in Africa, where children under 5 make up the largest share of the population. responsible for around 80% of all malaria deaths on the continent.

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

There are enough doses to initially vaccinate 250,000 children under 2 in Ivory Coast, while Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic have also authorized the vaccine, the university said.

R21 will be used in addition to the RTS,S vaccine, which has already been given to more than 2 million children in a four-year pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, where it has reduced all-cause mortality by 13%, according to UNICEF.

Both vaccines have been approved by the WHO and are expected to have a hugely positive impact on public health, alongside other prevention strategies such as mosquito nets.

Hill added that there was still “a lot of work to do to get people in the country settled, especially when you’re aiming to distribute millions of doses this year.”

“It’s a three-dose vaccine, usually given at five, six or seven months of age, followed by a booster a year later. This is not the time when other vaccines are usually given, so training is needed in these countries where incomes are largely relatively low.”