Professor from Kilmacolm is helping to eradicate a deadly tropical disease

Nick Jewell, 68, a professor of biostatistics and statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is an independent statistician on a research trial aiming to stop the spread of dengue fever, a serious viral disease that threatens more than half of the world.

The mosquito-borne tropical disease kills approximately 40,000 people and causes half a million hospitalisations every year.

Scientists have been carrying out research into it over several years and have discovered that infecting mosquitoes with natural bacteria dramatically reduces their ability to transmit dengue.

This discovery could pave the way to eliminating the disease.

Nick, who has enjoyed a long career at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "Doubly exciting is that the trial design used here provides a template that others can follow.”

Nick attended Kilmacolm Primary and then Glasgow Academy.

He studied at Edinburgh University and earned a first class honours degree in applied mathematics, followed by a PhD.

He then spent time in California, returning briefly to Scotland for a year before joining the staff at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Soon he returned to the US west as a faculty member at Berkeley, where he served as a professor of biostatistics for many years and was vice provost of the university from 1994 to 2000.

Nick says he is very proud of his roots in Inverclyde.

He told the Telegraph: "I have many happy memories of my childhood in Kilmacolm.

"I remember vividly catching steam trains to commute to school in Glasgow from an early age, and playing many sports in Kilmacolm park and nearby tennis courts.

"I still like to follow Morton."

Dengue infection is most prevalent in south and central America, where the tropical weather is perfect for mosquitoes, but it is also a problem in south east Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific.

The World Health Organization recorded 4.2 million cases in 2019.

Research conducted in Indonesia, where dengue is endemic, found that releasing mosquitoes infected with a bacteria reduced the number of dengue infections by 77 per cent compared with untreated areas.

The same method is also being applied in other countries where dengue is prevalent, with the aim of eliminating the disease as a public health concern.

During the study, buckets of mosquito eggs infected with the bacteria were gradually distributed to homes over a period of around six months.

About six million mosquitoes were released across an area of 13 square kilometres, where they then infected other wild mosquitoes with the bacteria.

Nick said: "This is a huge advance and relief.

"It involved a lot of work over five years."

Nick now splits his time between the London School of Hygiene and and California.

He is married to Debra and they have a daughter, Britta, who has a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology from Imperial College London, a MSc from University of Oxford and a BA from UC Berkeley, where she studied European history and the history of medicine.