[Perspectives] Fitsum Tadesse: shaping malaria research in sub-Saharan Africa

“Over the last one and a half decades we have seen malaria incidence, morbidity, and mortality decreasing. Ethiopia was performing phenomenally”, comments malaria researcher Fitsum G Tadesse, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the UK's London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who heads a large research team at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) in Addis Ababa, the clinical and biomedical research arm of the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia. “But, since 2019, that trend has reversed, and unfortunately, it's now moving in the wrong direction.” Tadesse is referring to the 960 000 cases of malaria reported across Ethiopia in 2019, that by 2025 had increased to 9·7 million.