September 23, 2024
Friends Board Member Receives Prestigious Lasker-Bloomberg Award for HIV Leadership
Washington, DC – Friends board member Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim has been honored with the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award for her contribution to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS and for transformative public health advocacy and programming throughout Africa and globally. She received the award alongside her husband, Dr. Salim S. Abdool Karim.
“This is a huge and richly deserved honor for these inspiring leaders in HIV science and advocacy,” said Friends’ President and CEO Chris Collins. “We could not be more thrilled for them.”
The couple is based in Durban, South Africa and founded the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa. At their research center, they recently oversaw a clinical trial that provided complete protection against HIV in young women who received a twice-yearly injection of lenacapavir – an extraordinary success and culmination of 35 years of work.
The Abdool Karims, who met as young scientists when South Africa was under apartheid rule, led the first studies that showed the rapid spread of HIV in the country, particularly among young Black women.
“We were scientists taking on the challenge not just for South Africa but for all of sub-Saharan Africa, but we weren’t doing it in New York or Washington, we were doing it while immersed in these vulnerable communities that was our source of inspiration,” Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim told the New York Times after receiving the Lasker-Bloombery award.
In addition to her scientific research work, she is a professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, Pro-Vice Chancellor for African Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and UNAIDS Special Ambassador for Adolescents and HIV.
“Congratulations to the Abdool Karims for this incredible achievement,” said Dr. Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Friends’ Board chair and past chairman and CEO of Rabin Martin, a global health impact consultancy. “We are honored to benefit from Quarraisha’s deep scientific and advocacy expertise on the Board and are thrilled for her to receive this global recognition.”
Established in 1945 by Mary and Albert Lasker, pioneering biomedical research advocates, the Lasker Awards are now widely regarded as America’s preeminent biomedical research prize. The awards carry an honorarium of $250,000 for each category.
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