In recognition of their lifetime achievements in global health, specifically in malaria elimination and beyond, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has given his Award for Global Health this year to Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck and Professor Sir Brian Greenwood.
The Director-General's Award for Global Health, established in 2019, was conferred during the High-Level segment on Tuesday, 20 May, at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly and this year included an honorary lifetime achievement award to each recipient.
"Their invaluable contributions have helped to alleviate the burden of malaria and other vaccine-preventable diseases and to build sustainable health system capacity in Africa," said Dr Tedros.
Noting Professor Coll Seck's achievements, Dr Tedros said, "While serving as Senegal's minister of health, Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck led landmark reforms, expanded universal access to care and integrated disease control programmes."
In addition to making significant contributions to scientific literature, Professor Coll Seck was, from 2004–2011, the Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria (RMB) partnership, where she mobilized political will to accelerate malaria interventions in low-income countries.
She has also been active on several high-profile boards and advisory groups, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, PATH, and other international NGOs and initiatives working on health financing, vaccines, and health system strengthening. She is currently the President of Forum Galien Afrique.
Professor Coll Seck was born in Senegal and trained as a physician with a specialization in infectious diseases. She earned her medical degree from the University of Dakar and pursued further specialization in bacteriology and virology in France.
"I've had the privilege of contributing to notable progress but I've also borne witness to ongoing challenges and emerging emergencies whether they be in terms of climate, demography or technology. This prize is all the more important in that it symbolizes trust in the values that I defend: solidarity between peoples, science in the service of humanity and the leadership of women in the health system," said Professor Coll Seck.
Professor Greenwood is best known for his pivotal work in malaria control. He has also played a central role in shaping global health policy and research strategies, serving on numerous advisory boards, including those of WHO.
"Over the last five decades, Professor Sir Greenwood performed pioneering research and made major contributions to infectious disease control. His work on malaria has been instrumental in shaping modern approaches to control this devastating disease. His contributions range from the introduction of insecticide-treated bed nets to groundbreaking trials for the RTS,S malaria vaccine, the first vaccine to be recommended for widespread use," said Dr Tedros.
Professor Greenwood's early career focused on infectious disease research in Nigeria and the Gambia, where he lived for decades and led a multidisciplinary programme targeting diseases like malaria, pneumonia, measles, and HIV2. In the Gambia, he demonstrated the effectiveness of insecticide-treated nets in reducing child mortality and morbidity and contributed to malaria control through seasonal antimalarial drug administration.
In 1996, Professor Greenwood returned to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, continuing his research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He contributed to the successful use of the MenAfriVac vaccine in the African meningitis belt, which helped stop epidemics in Chad. He also advocated for combining seasonal vaccination with seasonal malaria chemoprevention.
Reflecting on his career, which began in Nigeria as a young doctor about 60 years ago, Professor Greenwood said, "The pediatric wards were full of measles, meningitis, malaria, polio, there were still even occasions with smallpox coming to hospital. The under-5 child mortality was about 400 per thousand in parts of west Africa. So, how that's changed in one person's lifetime. Many of those diseases are not gone but are much reduced and there has been a dramatic improvement in under-5 child mortality. In the Gambia where I also worked, that's now 40, a 10-fold drop."
