Malaria is endemic in many countries in Sub Saharan Africa including Malawi, and the burden of disease affects young children. Currently there is no effective vaccine. It is against this background that Dr Dumi Tembo, a parasitologist, conducted a study on how sequestered Plasmodium falciparum parasites responsible for fatal cerebral malaria (CM) differ from other strains of P. falciparum that cause other forms of malaria in their expression of the major cytoadherence ligand, PfEMP1 and how this is associated with CM pathology.

The study was part of the University of Liverpool-University of Malawi joint PhD programme of which she was the first scholarship recipient and the first to complete.  Dr Tembo is currently with Cornell University in New York, USA, on a postdoctoral fellowship assessing the impact of macrophages on inflammation in CM.