First Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prizes awarded to infectious disease experts

The inaugural Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prizes, named after Rockefeller University’s prominent early-20th-century bacteriologist, were awarded to Brian Greenwood and Miriam K. Were, the government of Japan announced yesterday.

Greenwood, Manson Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, receives the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research for his work on malaria. Greenwood contributed to the creation and design of effective strategies to control malaria, which claims more than one million lives a year across the African continent.

Were, cofounder and health specialist at the UZIMA Foundation in Kenya, receives the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Services. For the last 40 years, Were has worked to bring basic medical services and health rights to women and children in the villages of East Africa.

“The Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize celebrates Dr. Noguchi’s legacy, and I am pleased that Dr. Brian Greenwood and Dr. Miriam K. Were have been chosen as the first recipients,” says Paul Nurse, a member of the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize Selection Committee and president of The Rockefeller University, the successor to The Rockefeller Institute where Noguchi worked. “Dr. Greenwood and Dr. Were embody Dr. Noguchi’s enduring spirit and compassion for helping those in need and have contributed greatly to battling infectious diseases through research and education, offering hope to the many people in Africa who suffer from such debilitating diseases as malaria and AIDS.”

Noguchi, born in 1876 in Inawashiro, Japan, joined The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York (now The Rockefeller University) in 1904. Noguchi made numerous contributions to the understanding of infectious disease. Chief among his discoveries was the cultivation of the microbe that causes syphilis. His misunderstanding of the cause of yellow fever – he believed it was a bacterium, but researchers later showed it to be a virus – and his pursuit of a cure led him to Ghana, where he died from the disease in 1924 at the age of 51. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. A bronze bust of Noguchi, created in 1927 by sculptor Sergei Timofeyevich Konenkov, sits in the university’s library.

The Japanese government established the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize in July 2006 to award individuals with outstanding achievements in the field of medical research and medical services. The prize aims to encourage the fight against diseases in Africa, thus contributing to the health and welfare of people living in Africa and elsewhere.

2008 Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize laureates
Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize