Personnel: Malaria researcher Rose Leke receives important health award

Rose Gana Fomban Leke has received this year’s Virchow Prize for Global Health for her “groundbreaking pioneering and research work” against malaria and for her commitment to gender equality. The emeritus professor of immunology and parasitology at the University of Yaounde I in her home country of Cameroon wants to use the prize money of 500,000 euros to promote women in science, as she said at an event in Berlin over the weekend. This is also important in their area: around 600,000 people die of malaria every year, three quarters are children under the age of five.

Rose Leke, who comes from a humble background and suffered from malaria several times as a child, became interested in medical issues at an early age. With the help of a scholarship, she went to study in the USA before completing her doctorate at the University of Montreal in 1975 with a thesis on processes in the liver after a malaria infection. Unlike many colleagues, Leke went back to Cameroon and researched an area that had previously been ignored: malaria in pregnancy. She showed that many cases of malaria in pregnant women went undetected and were not treated. With fatal consequences, because malaria can cause premature births and miscarriages. Leke also started research into antibodies in newborns and immunity in small children.

She has been awarded honorary doctorates and prizes several times for her work. But Leke, who constantly eats peanuts and always carries a mirror, a rosary and her diary with her, likes to point out on such occasions that it’s not just about scientific questions. African countries should spend more money fighting malaria, she says. Researchers and politicians should also work closely with the local population. The now 76-year-old doesn’t want to give up hope for a malaria-free world.