China's Tu Youyou who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering new drugs against malaria has called for joint efforts to tackle the disease.

The 2015 Nobel Prize laureate for Physiology or Medicine Tu Youyou attends a press conference at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, capital of Sweden, Dec. 6, 2015.[Photo/Xinhua]

Tu made the call while attending a news conference at the Nobel Forum, together with the two other Medicine Prize laureates, Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura.

Tu expressed her deep concerns about the possible further spread of malaria, saying Chinese herbal medicine could help prevent such a situation:

"Traditional Chinese medicine is a great treasure, so we really have to work hard to improve it. I have been using it to alleviate the symptoms of malaria for many years,"

Death rates from malaria have plunged 60 percent in the past 15 years.

Even though the diseases still kills around half a million people a year, most of those are babies and young children in the poorest parts of Africa.

The other two co-winners, who discovered new drugs that can effectively eradicate river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, also said teamwork was the key to success.

The three scientists were awarded the Prize in early October and will be presented with the award this coming Thursday.

The medicine prize is worth some 960-thousand US Dollars and is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year.

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