The Social Council of the University of Barcelona has named John Jairo Aponte, a researcher at ISGlobal's research centre, CRESIB, winner of this year's Ramón Margalef Award for an article on intermittent preventive treatment in infants (IPTi) published in The Lancet. The article, entitled "Efficacy and safety of intermittent preventive treatment with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine for malaria in African infants: a pooled analysis of six randomised, placebo-controlled trials", is based on the research conducted by Dr. Aponte during his doctoral studies, which were supervised by Pedro Alonso, Director of ISGlobal and professor of public health at the UB. The award ceremony was held at the UB on December 18, 2012.

The Lancet article describes the work conducted by Dr Aponte and his team within the framework of the IPTi consortium, which is coordinated by CRESIB researchers. The results of this work played a key role in the decision by the World Health Organization to recommend IPTi with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) as a new malaria control tool. According to the article, SP-IPTi can prevent one in three cases of malaria in the first year of life.

Dr Aponte has a degree in medicine from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá in Colombia and a masters in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2011, he received a doctoral degree (cum laude) from the UB Faculty of Medicine for his thesis "Evaluation of malaria prevention tools in early childhood", which was supervised by ISGlobal Director, Dr Alonso. Dr Aponte's work at CRESIB continues to be focused on the fight against malaria.

Video of the event