3m
23 Apr 2021

‘We’ve never had successful results come through so quickly’, says Jenner Institute’s Prof Adrian Hill

Europe Editor and Presenter

Whilst the world’s attention has been focused on Covid, scientists have been trying to engineer an effective vaccine for malaria and for good reason. According to one reputable analysis, half of all human beings who have ever lived, about 50 billion of us, died from mosquito-borne diseases. First and foremost malaria. That makes the tiny mosquito what one historian calls our “Apex Predator”, our destroyer of worlds.

Mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs have helped. But in this year of vaccines along comes another produced by the same institution that gave us the Oxford Covid jab, with efficacy of 77% in children, according to clinical trial data.

We spoke to Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, to discuss the vaccine he helped to develop.