by Bhaswati Guha Majumder - May 1, 2021 04:12 AM (Flickr) How Novavax's Covid-19 vaccine helped it in creating a vaccine for malaria as well. The development of vaccines is considered to be one of the top achievements in public health. Vaccines were what helped eradicate smallpox in 1980 and now scientists are trying to eliminate malaria through jabs. According to a research paper, published in April this year, experts from the University of Oxford and the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro have conducted a clinical trial of a new malaria vaccine candidate called R21/MM. After the trial, the researchers found that the vaccine demonstrated 77 per cent efficacy in children in western Africaâs Burkina Faso.