KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme

The KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme focusses on health care and medical research, and areas that have a direct impact on policy such as vaccination, clinical research, population health, health systems and community engagement. Our centre aims to increase the Kenyan scientific capacity, and train the next generation of scientists who will help develop Kenya’s scientific agenda and steer it. Interview recorded in 2019

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Malaria in Kenya

Understanding the variation of malaria risk between houses, villages or region, and how malaria is transmitted in and around that variability helps develop better malaria control programmes and use their resources more wisely. Since malaria control tools are becoming less effective with time, progress in vaccine design is essential. Interview recorded in 2015

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I am Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, a collaborative Programme formed by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Wellcome and University of Oxford.  I am a clinician with specialist training in infectious disease.  I have an interest in the evaluation of malaria vaccines in the field.  I am interested in determining the impact of heterogeneity of malaria transmission on vaccine efficacy, in examining correlates of protection, and the duration of efficacy.

Other epidemiological interests include validating definitions of severe malaria, studies of naturally acquired immunity to malaria, bone infection and osteomyelitis, and over the last few years a developing interest in spatial epidemiology. 

This latter interest has led to the award of a Clinician Scientist Fellowship by the MRC (UK) in 2012 to examine the spatial heterogeneity of malaria transmission. I am conducting studies to describe the micro-epidemiology of hotspots of malaria on a fine spatial scale, and to examine the genetic relatedness of parasites in and around hotspots. 

I have a major interest in vaccine trials, working on Ebola, Yellow Fever and Malaria vaccines, and working on a human challenge model for falciparum malaria to study naturally acquired protective immunity.