Medicine man Marsh

Published in The Guardian on Tuesday 12 May 2009

Linda Nordling meets Kevin Marsh, an Oxford professor who is most at home fighting tropical diseases in Kenya

EXCERPT:  It wasn't always like this. When Marsh came to Kilifi 20 years ago with his wife, Vickie, and their three small children, the research took place in a single room in the hospital. Originally, the focus was on malaria. But it soon became clear that this was too narrow in a place where childhood disease comes in many guises. "You can't justify doing a project on vaccines when around you people are dying from a preventable disease," Marsh says.

Today, the programme investigates a range of issues, from ways of improving public health in developing countries to disease modelling. The new building was completed in 2006. At £3m it was a bargain, says Marsh - a similar place would have cost £20m to build outside Oxford.

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