She has achieved a great deal at a young age, but professor of vaccinology and malaria expert Meta Roestenberg is never ‘finished’. ‘It always has to be more, faster and harder’. But also: ‘I hope I will be unemployed in twenty years’ time.’

‘The covid crisis has given us our first insight into how people in countries where malaria occurs must feel, what it’s like to run the risk of being infected every day’, says Meta Roestenberg (40), internist and professor since last year. In 2020, 241 million people were infected with the malaria parasite and the number of fatal malaria victims rose to 627,000, almost 70,000 more than the year before, because fewer people had access to necessary care due to the coronavirus pandemic.