JOHANNESBURG: South African Indian-origin scientist couple Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim have received the 2024 Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award from the Lasker Foundation in the US. The internationally acclaimed couple, married for 36 years after they met at Columbia University, have both played a major role in HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 research, earning them the honour, which includes a USD 250,000 award.
They received the award “for illuminating key drivers of heterosexual HIV transmission and introducing life-saving approaches to prevent and treat HIV”, the foundation said in a statement.
“The prize further recognises them for their statesmanship in public health policy and their advocacy. The Abdool Karims have influenced AIDS programmes across the globe and they have played pivotal roles in developing South Africa’s scientific capacity. Throughout their careers, they have championed science and its potential to benefit the world’s citizens,” it added.
The couple was born and raised in South Africa in the apartheid era when societal inequities based on prioritising white citizens and denying the majority Black community the franchise undermined health, education, and quality of life.
Driven by the discrimination and segregation, they have consistently juggled professional advancement with activism.
When the Abdool Karims went back to South Africa in 1988, they decided to study HIV there, which few others were doing at the time. They persevered for 18 years, assessing numerous candidate products on thousands of people in clinical trials.
The Abdool Karims also undertook a study which found that integrating TB and HIV therapies dramatically decreased the one-year mortality rate.
Besides their research work, the Abdool Karims built South Africa’s scientific infrastructure and cultivated the next generation of infectious disease experts, boosted by funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), to launch the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA).
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck the world, CAPRISA scientists deployed their sequencing capabilities, developed for HIV analyses, to understand SARS-CoV-2 variants.
They published the first scientific article on omicron when it emerged in November 2021 and predicted that it would spread easily and quickly. The paper drew enormous attention and helped inform the ongoing response to the pandemic.
In addition to establishing CAPRISA with Quarraisha, Salim spearheaded the creation of four other major research centres in South Africa and served as the first director for every one of them.
Quarraisha co-chairs the 10-member panel that counsels the UN Secretary-General on how science can promote the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and Salim serves as Special Advisor on pandemics to the Director-General of the WHO. They contributed significantly to the UN High-Level Declaration on Ending the AIDS Epidemic by 2030.
The pair have also played senior advisory roles at UNAIDS, Africa’s CDC, and PEPFAR. In 2022, The World Academy of Sciences elected Quarraisha president; the first woman to serve in that position.
She has also been appointed the UNAIDS Special Ambassador for Adolescents and HIV. In addition to their formal positions at the highest international levels, the Abdool Karims have advised the US Congress and UK Parliament.