Japan’s Fourth Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize to be awarded to Profs Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim

Foreign Desk

Professors Salim Abdool Karim and his wife, Quarraisha, will receive the Fourth Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize in the medical research category from Japan for their work on HIV/Aids and Covid-19 in Africa. The Carter Center in the US will receive recognition in the medical services category for its work in the guinea worm eradication programme.

Prof Abdool Karim is Director at the Center for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), CAPRISA Professor of Global Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Prof Quarraisha Abdool Karim is Associate Scientific Director of CAPRISA, Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York and Pro Vice-Chancellor (African Health) at University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

The Japanese government said that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a final decision on the laureates based on the recommendation of the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize committee.

“The prize aims to honour individuals or organisations with outstanding achievements in the fields of medical research and medical services to combat infectious and other diseases in Africa, thus contributing to the health and welfare of the African people and of all humankind,” the government said.

The Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize is named after a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who died of yellow fever in Ghana in 1928 while studying methods to prevent and treat the disease.

The awards ceremony will be held at the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Tunisia at the end of August.

Source: Diplomatic Society.