MESA Alliance's blog

Day 1: Wednesday, 30th October 2019
Joint Keystone Symposia with Grand Challenges Annual Meeting

Grand Challenges: Where we go next: African leadership for African Innovation

It’s Sunday evening in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and the four young career researchers that will cover the 6th Pan-African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA) Annual Conference as MESA Correspondents have finally met each other. After many email exchanges, it’s time to put faces to names. While sharing a tasty Cameroonian meal, the group discusses how scientific meetings offer the opportunity of hearing cutting edge research and valuable lessons learnt from peers and mentors, but are also the perfect environment to exchange information, generate new ideas and gain knowledge and skills. Together with the MESA team, the group discusses the program and the presentations that each Correspondent will have to report on and realises how both broad and niche disciplines in the field of malaria and related topics will be covered in the meeting. Another point of discussion is the fact that a growing number of conferences are held globally, but as both calendars and budgets are limited, not everyone interested in all these meetings can attend.

The Malaria Eradication Scientific Alliance (MESA) is seeking three volunteer MESA Correspondents to report from the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA) annual conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, 23-25 September 2019.

Day 2: Thursday, 27th June

The main focus of the presentations on day two of the 7th International Conference on Plasmodium vivax Research was on laboratory exploration of P. vivax biological characteristics, parasite development stages and host-parasite interaction. There was a lively poster session during the lunch period and a conference dinner at the magnificent Musée d’Orsay.

Mary Mael and Maria Tusell*

Participants in the Science of Eradication: Malaria course shared a sense of optimism and agreed on the need for leadership and data-driven decision-making in the fight against this disease

“Collaboration” was probably the word most heard when asking the participants of the 8th edition of the Science of Eradication: Malaria course how they thought the fight against malaria could be improved. Even though progress has stalled, as highlighted by the head of the Global Malaria Programme, Pedro Alonso, in the opening lecture, participants left Barcelona with a shared feeling of optimism and a perception that with commitment, a multidisciplinary approach to the disease and data-driven decisions; malaria control, elimination and eradication are indeed achievable goals.