PROFESSORS SALIM AND QUARRAISHA ABDOOL KARIM RECEIVE THE N’GALY-MANN AWARD AND DELIVER THE OPENING LECTURE AT THE RETROVIRUS CONFERENCE IN SEATTLE ON 5 MARCH 2012
The prestigious N’Galy-Mann Award was presented to Professors Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim in the Opening Session of the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) on Monday 5 March 2012 in Seattle, Washington, USA.
The Award, which is named after the late Dr Bosenge N’Galy, first Head of the Zairean National AIDS Programme, and the late Dr Jonathan Mann, the first head of the WHO Global Programme on AIDS, is the pre-eminent award for AIDS research. The recipients collected the Award and delivered the Plenary Lecture in the Opening Session of CROI, which was attended by about 4000 AIDS scientists from throughout the world. The Abdool Karims’ lecture focused on the important partnerships and collaborations in creating excellence in developing scientific innovations for HIV prevention and treatment.
Quarraisha Abdool Karim - Associate Professor of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, Adjunct Professor in Public Health and Family Medicine at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Associate Scientific Director of CAPRISA - remarked: “Our research on the tenofovir gel microbicide was made possible by the joint funding of the South African and US governments. The South African partnerships with US government agencies (USAID and NIH), US non-profit organisations (FHI360 and CONRAD), US pharmaceutical company (Gilead Sciences) and US philanthropy (MAC AIDS Fund) are central to the success of the gel research.”
The N’Galy-Mann Award was established in 2006 to recognise an individual or team of researchers for their contribution to epidemiology and clinical research. The award-winning husband-and-wife team, the Abdool Karims, has been widely recognised for their world-class science that is impacting the global epidemic and providing locally developed solutions for the South African HIV epidemic. Over the last decade, they have made seminal contributions to understanding how HIV is spread, the evolving HIV epidemic and have played a leading role in the development and testing of microbicide gels for women. In addition, the World Health Organisation guidelines on treating HIV and TB co-infection are based on their studies that demonstrated the benefits of combining both drug treatments. Their research on acute HIV infection has led to patents which are being used in several AIDS vaccines. Their broad impact on both HIV prevention and treatment led to their selection for the N’Galy-Mann award.