Salim and Quarraisha Abdool-Karim, a married couple and renowned researchers, have been awarded the prestigious Lasker Award for Public Service for their groundbreaking work on HIV. Their research highlighted the high rate of HIV transmission among young women in South Africa and led to life-saving prevention and treatment strategies.
This year's Lasker Prize for public service goes to South Africa n 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.
One of their major findings came in the early days of the HIV pandemic, in the 1980s, when the disease was seen in the U.S. and Western countries as predominantly affecting gay men. The Abdool-Karims found that in their home country it was predominantly women in their teens getting infected by older men.
Living in that kind of situation, the message you get over and over and over is that you're not good enough and you are inferior because you are not white. And having grown up in that kind of environment was almost a challenge for us to say, actually, we are good enough. That was a signal that these young women were not acquiring HIV from teenage boys; they were acquiring HIV from men who were about 10 years older.
And eventually, I went to medical school at the University of Natal, which at that stage was the only medical school for Black students. And became an anti-apartheid activist and joined the struggle for freedom. And having graduated as a young doctor, I decided to specialize in virology. That was a signal that these young women were not acquiring HIV from teenage boys; they were acquiring HIV from men who were about 10 years older.
HIV AIDS Research South Africa Lasker Prize
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