Children in Ivory Coast received the first dose of the new malaria vaccine on Monday. The R21 vaccine is developed by the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India (SII). The vaccine has been sent to several African countries and will also be administered in South Sudan, said Oxford University in a statement to CNN.

The R21//Matrix-M™ vaccine is the second malaria vaccine to be authorised for use in children in malaria-endemic regions. The WHO in December 2023 added the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine to its list of prequalified vaccines. In October 2023, WHO recommended the use of R21/Matrix-M for the prevention of malaria in children. This was done following the advice of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group.

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 that 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.

WHO says that upto 500,000 child deaths could be saved every year with the widespread implementation of R21, alongside its counterpart RTS,S vaccine.

Oxford University said that the SII 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.

SII in an earlier statement said that the malaria vaccine marks the culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute. The vaccine is easily deployable, cost-effective and affordable, and has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

UNICEF says that the R21 will be used alongside the RTS,S vaccine, which has already been delivered to more than 2 million children over a four-year pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, where it reduced all-cause mortality by 13%. Both of these vaccines are approved by the WHO and has a huge positive impact on public health.

Hill said that there is still “a lot of work for people in-country to get set up, particularly when you’re aiming to distribute millions of doses from this year.”

“This is a three-dose vaccine, typically (given at) five, six, seven months of age and then a booster a year later. That’s not a time point that other vaccines are usually given at, so there’s training required in these largely relatively low income countries.”

Malaria is an infectious disease which doesn’t have a cure yet. Therefore, it is important to take all necessary measures that can help prevent one from being infected with the disease. The vaccines can help provide protection to people who are at risk of getting infected with the malaria virus.