Sir Nick White, authority on tropical diseases who transformed the treatment of malaria
His campaign to include a Chinese herbal remedy in anti-malarial drug combinations saved millions of lives
Professor Sir Nick White, who has died of cancer aged 74, was an expert on tropical diseases and played a leading role in transforming treatments for malaria, saving millions of lives.
In 1981 he read a paper published in 1979 in the Chinese Medical Journal describing how “Qinghaosu”, a drug derived from sweet wormwood and used in traditional herbal medicine, was curing malaria with no side-effects.
At the time malaria was resurgent as the Plasmodium parasites which cause the disease were becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat it. The idea that a traditional Chinese herbal medicine might offer the solution was greeted with scepticism by most global health experts, but White thought it was worth further examination.
He travelled to China and brought a sample of Qinghaosu, known in English as artemisinin, back to his lab at the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Thailand, a Wellcome Trust-funded partnership between Mahidol University in Bangkok and Oxford University’s Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health.
In early studies White and colleagues found that artemisinin, though effective, metabolised into the body so quickly that malaria sufferers needed seven doses a day. White thought the answer might be to combine it with another drug that was slower-acting but longer-lasting.
Clinical trials undertaken in Asia and Africa proved the effectiveness of artemisinin combination therapy, which was found to cure 98 per cent of uncomplicated cases, while reducing infection rates.
White went on to lead a campaign to make antimalarial drug combinations containing artemisinin the standard treatment for the most common form of the disease though, much to his frustration, it was not until 2006 that the therapy was recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the front-line treatment against malaria.
The eldest of three children, Nicholas John White was born in London on March 13 1951 to John White, an RAF armament officer, and Eileen, née Millard, who had worked in the Air Ministry during the Second World War. The family moved with his father’s postings, including to Singapore, where young Nick became fascinated by tropical plants.
From St John’s College in Southsea, Hampshire, White trained in medicine at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1974 and winning the gold medal for the University of London’s top medical student. He also completed a degree in clinical pharmacology.
After a year in Nepal working with the Britain Nepal Medical Trust, he completed residencies at hospitals in London and at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.
In 1980 he joined the research team at MORU. Appointed director of its research programme in 1986, he became chairman of the Wellcome Trust Southeast Asian Tropical Medicine Research Programmes from 2001. He also held chairs in tropical medicine at the universities of Oxford and Mahidol, Thailand.
Alongside malaria, White researched better treatments, often involving combination therapies, for many other infectious diseases, including tetanus, dengue and tuberculosis.
When the WHO endorsed artemisinin combination therapies in 2006, it declared that they were “unlikely to be affected by resistance in the near future”. That assessment turned out to be over-optimistic. Although malaria numbers fell between 2000 and 2015, as early as 2009 MORU researchers found that malaria parasites on Thailand’s border with Cambodia had evolved to resist combination therapies.
The same year, White was instrumental in setting up the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, serving as its first chairman. Before his death he was working on trials of triple combinations involving artemisinin plus two other drugs.
White was appointed OBE in 1999 and KCMG in 2017. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006.
His first marriage, to Maren Randall, was dissolved. He is survived by their two daughters, by his second wife Jitda Wongsuwanna, and by her daughter, whom he adopted.
Sir Nick White, born March 13 1951, died February 1 2026
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
