I would like to take you on a journey - of despair, hope, discovery and innovation behind one of the biggest problems in global health: malaria.

Let me start by painting a picture: a picture of a place where prevailing conditions actively work against the aim of restoring health to those in need; a place where, despite the lack of staff, of funding and infrastructure, ordinary men and women perform nothing short of miracles, day after day after day.

We are standing in Kumasi hospital in central Ghana. Despite the many dedicated and passionate healthcare professionals, it is a bleak place, no more so than at the end of a long corridor, where you will find the severe malaria ward. Here there are 14 beds, many of which have two, or even three children in them. This is where the sickest children come, many travelling great distances on foot.

And yet here, in this small room, you will find hope. This is a place where treatment is given – antimalarials, fluids, antibiotics, which fight the disease and restore the child’s strength. The odds are stacked in favour of the older children, those who have built up some kind of natural resistance and whose immune systems are better able to fight back. Doctors and nurses patiently attend to the children and, for the lucky ones, the ones who arrive in time, slowly, very slowly, the disease regresses and comes under control.

Kumasi hospital is a very typical place in Africa and I’ve seen the work these healthcare professionals do in places like Ghana. They are, to my mind, heroes who fight an impossible fight against diseases like malaria, TB and HIV/Aids.

With malaria, their battle is colossal: three million people die each year because of the disease – mostly infants, young children and pregnant women. One child every thirty seconds. With malaria, it’s 9/11 each and every day.

This is a human tragedy. It also brings with it significant societal impact and devastating consequences for Africa’s economic development. The World Health Organisation has calculated that malaria costs Africa more than $12 billion a year and has resulted in African GDP being 32 per cent lower than it would have been if malaria had been eradicated in the Sixties.

So what can the pharmaceutical industry do to help? Well, we must do what we do best, to seek out new and innovating ways to fight the disease. Industry is developing new products to treat malaria, but the malaria parasite is a cruel enemy. Resistance to existing treatments can develop quickly.

A real breakthrough, though, would be to prevent the disease itself. For the past 20 years, GSK has been working on the malaria vaccine. In Agogo, just three hours’ drive from Kumasi hospital, a little boy, Ernest, has just been vaccinated with a new and promising malaria vaccine as part of an ongoing clinical trial. His mother is overcome with emotion and gratitude. She has already lost two of her children to malaria. She hopes that the vaccine will ensure she doesn’t lose a third one.

The trial is one of an ongoing programme of clinical trials across Africa, bringing the vaccine closer and closer to market. The path has not been an easy one and, as is so often the case, it has needed great champions to see it through.

In 1987, one of our scientists, Joe Cohen, had the fundamental scientific insight that led to the creation of the vaccine. Joe is a modest man, someone who would first and foremost insist that the team around him are also credited with the great achievement they have attained. But in Africa, he is known as Father Joe, father of the malaria vaccine. For 20 years Joe and his team have systematically overcome one scientific hurdle after another.

Developing a vaccine is a very long and complex process, typically spanning more than 15 years. The malaria parasite has added complexities. This, combined with the need to undertake clinical development in countries endemic with malaria and where there are very few hospitals or medical resources as we would know them, and the many religious and linguistic divides, have made the journey of the vaccine a long, difficult and precarious one. Using innovative techniques such as fusing the malaria protein with the genes we use in our Hepatitis B vaccine, producing it in yeast cells and, finally, in 1989, using an innovative, new and adjuvant system to stimulate immune response to the vaccine, Joe has brought us to the brink of a major scientific breakthrough. He is owed a great debt of gratitude from us all for his confidence and tremendous tenacity.

The results from the clinical trials have been very promising and today we are unveiling more new and exciting data on the vaccine. In 2005 GSK’s malaria vaccine made history, at least in the scientific community, when a clinical trial involving more than 2,000 children in southern Mozambique showed that it was effective in reducing the most severe forms of the disease by close to 50 per cent and for up to 18 months. It was a great start.

In a new study, also conducted in Mozambique, the vaccine has been shown to be effective in reducing malaria infection by 65 per cent in the youngest infants aged ten to eighteen weeks, those most at risk from the disease. And the vaccine has also proven to be very safe.

This vaccine won’t be a magic bullet, it will need to be deployed in combination with existing prevention and treatment tools, including bed nets and spraying. Nevertheless, it could have a fantastic impact on millions of lives.

This partnership approach is one GSK embraces and is critical to the future success of this malaria vaccine.

As Albert Sabin, who developed the old polio vaccine, said, a vaccine that sits on the shelf is useless. Science is not always a right-limiting factor and we must ensure that this malaria vaccine can be paid for and made available to millions of children. Just as innovative partnerships are being used to develop this vaccine, we will need innovative partnerships to help to ensure it reaches the children who need it most.

Malaria is a disease that the global community can defeat. Doing so requires political will, a significant mobilisation of additional resources, pharmaceutical industry commitment and a spirit of partnership.

I’d like to be able to paint one final picture for you. A picture ten years from now, a place where malaria is controlled, where people understand how to protect themselves and what to do if they get infected, a place where children, like Ernest, with the help of a vaccine, survive the threat of malaria. It is a place within our grasp, if our aspirations for the people of Africa remain high, and where hope can finally defeat despair for millions.

JP Garnier

The chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline is looking forward to a break from the rigours of running the world’s second-biggest pharmaceutical company. The Frenchman, who is about to turn 60 and lives in Philadelphia, is due to step down next May, to be replaced by a colleague, Andrew Witty. Originally from Normandy, he holds a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Louis Pasteur, in France, and an MBA from Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Dr Garnier originally worked for Schering Plough, the American drugs group, before he joined SmithKline Beecham in 1990 and was made chief executive of the merged group in 2001. In January 1997, he was selected by President Chirac to receive the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. He is married with three daughters and enjoys tennis, squash and reading.