While it has been a momentous year for the REACH Network, culminating recently in the Abuja Declaration on Child Survival, it has also been a year in which the REACH family lost a brilliant and valued member.
It was in June 2024 that our network of scientists, researchers, public health officials, colleagues, and friends learned of the death of Professor Nigel Klein, after a long illness.
As a Principal Investigator on the REACH Mali LAKANA study, Professor Klein was intimately involved with the REACH mission to prevent child deaths in high-mortality, low-resource settings.
His career as a whole, indeed, was dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of people, and children in particular, in many corners of the world.
Even in the days immediately preceding his death, Professor Klein was still keenly following the progress of work that is due to come to fruition, thanks in no small part to his own efforts, over the next few months.
The LAKANA study, and all the many projects Professor Klein contributed to in the course of his career, would not have been possible without the rigour and the commitment to scientific education of a man whose enthusiasm for life was every bit as infectious as his desire to combat infection and illness in his work.
A scientist of rare distinction
The LAKANA family of investigators, along with the wider REACH Network, convey their condolences to Professor Klein’s family, noting also their profound gratitude and admiration for a man who wore his expertise lightly and conducted himself at all times with unassuming wisdom, good humour and grace.
The range of Professor Klein’s scientific and public health interests was too great to be properly reflected in this short appreciation. He published over 600 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and was a prolific and respected contributor, particularly in his specialist fields – which included, but were by no means limited to, paediatric sepsis, meningitis, HIV, and the role of infection in preterm labour and foetal growth restriction.
At the time of his death, Professor Klein was Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at University College London’s Institute of Child Health.
He was also a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and an Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, an institution which was extremely close to his heart and which he served steadfastly for many years.
In a career spanning more than three decades, Professor Klein helped establish the Infectious Disease Unit at St Mary’s Hospital, London, was a member of the Wellcome Trust Infection and Immunity Board, and served with the Meningitis Research Foundation, the Malawi Wellcome Trust International Scientific Advisory Board, and many other boards in the fields of virology and immunology.
He was particularly proud of his work in KwaZulu-Natal, as part of the Africa Health Research Institute, where he became a faculty member. Feeling very much at home in this environment, he took particular pleasure in his teaching and mentoring responsibilities.
All of these structures and institutions were able to benefit from the experience and expertise of a man who always sought to ensure that his knowledge and clinical excellence would be as useful as possible, in the field, in real-world settings.
“Nigel”
As eminent a scientist as he was, and as notable his accomplishments in his chosen field, Professor Klein excelled just as fully in the domain in which we all remain lifelong students.
To the vast majority of those who knew him, whether professionally or personally, he was simply “Nigel”, and Nigel was kind, warm-hearted, never cynical, and always constructive.
Nigel’s professional domain was one which is extremely demanding scientifically and his contribution in those terms was immense. It is also a field that is extremely demanding in broader human terms, of course, and it may be in that context that Nigel’s contribution shines brightest.
All of his many friends and colleagues will recall with great affection the unextinguishable warmth of a man with whom it was always a pleasure to spend time, a man whose most important accomplishment may, in fact, have been to make you feel that the world can and ought to be a fundamentally decent place.
May that spirit, of goodness and of optimism, be a guiding principle for friends and colleagues, and for the entire REACH Network family, as they carry on Nigel’s work.