The award was given to Madhi in recognition of the meaningful impact he has had in the field of epidemiology. He intends to use the prize money to further his research into the development of a novel Group B streptococcus (GBS) common protein-antigen based vaccine, critical to preventing neonatal death and stillbirths due to GBS infections.

Each year, 5.5 million children under the age of 5 die across the world. Of those children, 45% of them die in the first month of life. 20% of these deaths are attributable to sever blood infections, and GBS is responsible for 320 000 invasive disease cases and 90 000 deaths globally each year, causing 50% of neonatal deaths in Africa and 19-37% of stillbirths in South Africa.

South Africa reports the highest incidence per thousand children of this type of disease in the world, but there has been little global investment into GBS due to the fact that it affects low-income countries more than high-income countries. Targeting pregnant women for vaccination confers early immunity against infections during early infancy, when babies are at the greatest risk of dying.

The research focuses on further investigation of three novel GBS protein antigens for which there is early evidence of their potential to be developed into an affordable GBS vaccine. Pre-clinical experiments using a mouse-infection and maternal immunisation newborn-mouse challenge model will be undertaken.

Further outputs include the generation of new knowledge that will be disseminated through presentations at scientific meetings and publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, and the strengthening of local capacity for pre-clinical murine-model challenge studies.

The grant will also be used to train two junior scientists at the PhD level. Prof Madhi states that “more investment into in terms of training at the postgraduate level will serve us well as a country and also on the continent”.

See what Professor Shabir Madhi has to say about the importance of this work.