Dr Allan Pamba on the ‘silent epidemic’ that drove him to leave his Kenyan village, train as a clinician and become a leading authority on global health

Like many fellow Kenyans, Allan Pamba had his first experience of malaria as a small boy in his grandparents’ village.

Growing up, he learned with horror of the disease’s heavy toll: of the global 400,000 deaths a year from malaria, the majority are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.



He became a doctor, and his early research into malaria and HIV led him to fight these illnesses from inside GlaxoSmithKline, making sure governments and companies don’t lose sight of people’s needs