This year's Lasker Prize for public service goes to South African researchers Salim and Quarraisha Abdool-Karim. The married couple made a startling discovery about HIV — and did something about it.
Professors Salim Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim, married for more than 40 years, are respected around the world for their research on HIV. In September they were named winners of the Lasker Award for public service in recognition for their groundbreaking medical research.
The power couple won the prize in the public service category “for illuminating key drivers of heterosexual HIV transmission; introducing life-saving approaches to prevent and treat HIV; and statesmanship in public health policy and advocacy,” the Lasker Foundation said in aGrowing up as South African Indians under the brutal apartheid system of white-minority rule, the Abdool-Karims faced discrimination and segregation and had limited educational opportunities.
We lived in an area where only Indian people lived. When we went to the post office, we entered by the door that said non-whites. When we went to the parks, we sat on a bench that said non-whites. But really valued education. When I finished high school in 1976, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. So I went to the University of Durban and did my BSc degree. And during that timeYou both studied in the States, then returned to South Africa in the early days of HIV/AIDS. What differences did you see between the two countries?
We lived in an area where only Indian people lived. When we went to the post office, we entered by the door that said non-whites. When we went to the parks, we sat on a bench that said non-whites. But really valued education. When I finished high school in 1976, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. So I went to the University of Durban and did my BSc degree. And during that timeYou both studied in the States, then returned to South Africa in the early days of HIV/AIDS. What differences did you see between the two countries?
Quarraisha: That's how we came to appreciate and understand that all the efforts at the time to prevent HIV infection did not take this account, did not take into account the needs of young women facing the social challenge of being in these age-sex disparate relationships and nothing that was available that they could use.
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