LIVERPOOL’S School of Tropical Medicine has been given more than £31m for research into malaria.

The donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will help develop new insecticides to control mosquitoes and other insects which transmit the disease.

The $50m five-year grant goes directly to the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), based at the school.

The new cash will mean the consortium can continue work that began four years ago. The IVCC was established in 2005 with an initial grant of $50.7m for five years from the foundation.

Health chiefs said that since then, an unprecedented amount of new insecticides have been developed through partnership projects with global chemical companies.

Director of LSTM Professor Janet Hemingway said: “The need for new insecticides has never been greater.

“Increased funding for control programmes is saving thousands of lives but malaria is still killing one child in Africa every 45 seconds.

“Resistance to insecticides is increasing at an alarming rate and we must find new alternatives even if we are to stay still in our battle against this and other vector-borne diseases.