Australian scientist Professor Brendan Crabb believes there is no more impactful contribution to human development than ridding the world of malaria.
Now his research into the disease - which kills 1,200 children a day - has been formally recognised, with the GSK Award for Research Excellence.
The award recognises his research into the DNA of the malaria parasite, which has transformed how scientists explore malaria prevention and treatments globally.
"I think the reason that I won the award is more important than me," Professor Crabb, who is the director of Melbourne's Burnet Institute, told SBS News.
Professor Brendan Crabb is an infectious disease researcher. Source: YouTube/Burnet Institute
“Perhaps a lot of people would say that, but I think that if you work on a disease of poverty, like I do, one that affects so many people around the world … it's just pleasing to have a focus on an issue that is so big, yet invisible to so many people."
Malaria is one of the leading causes of death and disease burden globally, accounting for more than 430,000 deaths in 2017.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports 731 million people are at risk of contracting malaria in the Pacific region, with 595,000 cases of the disease reported in 2017, 80 per cent of which occurred in Papua New Guinea.
Climate change adding to fight
Malaria is a mosquito-borne highly infectious disease which affects humans and animals and is very easily spread. Once contracted, symptoms can include fever, tiredness, vomiting and headaches, and can lead to seizures and death.
Director of the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, Professor Louis Schofield, said: "It's caused by a small unicellular organism that eats your red blood cells and it is carried in the blood. When a mosquito eats a blood meal they pick up the malaria parasite in their stomach and then they spread it to the next person they bite."
Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, an international financial and partnership organisation that aims to meet the United Nations target of eradicating epidemics, says eradicating the disease is becoming more difficult because of climate change.
"Significant parts of particularly eastern Africa are protected from malaria by altitude, so if you go to Kenya or Ethiopia, there are parts where it is too cold for mosquitoes because it is too high,” Mr Sands said.
“[But] what we are seeing is that mosquitoes that carry malaria are becoming present in some of the places where they were not present before … and obviously that's a very worrying development."
Professor Crabb, like Mr Sands, is concerned unpredictable weather which comes with climate change will make it harder to track malaria, expose new places to the disease, therefore making it more difficult to eradicate.
Malaria is on the rise in Papua New Guinea. Source: AAP
"In Papua New Guinea to our north where there is a lot of malaria, if you are in a highland region, at a certain point above sea level, you didn't have to worry about malaria,” he said.
“We are now very worried that those people, which is where a lot of people live, will have to deal with malaria in the pretty near future, perhaps even are now, because the climates are warmer and it suits the mosquito more."
Malaria and Australia
Australia was declared malaria-free by the WHO in 1981, but each year there are around 300 to 500 cases of the disease, most of which are people who have travelled to a malaria-affected country without taking anti-malarial medications.
While the likelihood of an outbreak occurring is low, Professor Schofield said it is integral Australia, in particular in northern Queensland, continually practise precautionary measures.
“Even though there is no actual malaria transmission going on in the country, people do come into the country with malaria and we have to be constantly vigilant that it does not re-establish,” he said.
The GSK Award for Research Excellence, enacted in 1980, is one of the most prestigious accolades in the Australian medical research community and aims to recognise outstanding research important to human health.
GSK Australia’s medical director Dr Andrew Weekes said the potential global impact of Professor Crabb's work is why the independent panel chose him for this year’s award.
"His extraordinary work in malaria and better understanding the mechanisms of the interactions of the malaria disease, and the human host in particular, and his vision is to find new ways of interfering with that disease with the hope that, that dreadful worldwide issue could be solved," he said.
Dr Weekes is hoping the $80,000 funding which accompanies the accolade will enable Professor Crabb to trial new malaria vaccines and eventually lead to a cure.
