This morning, the Government of Japan announced that Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, will be awarded the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research, and will formally receive the award from the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, on 1 June, the opening day of the 5th Tokyo International Conference on African Development.
The Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize was established to honour individuals or organisations with outstanding achievements in the fields of medical research and medical services to combat infectious and other diseases in Africa. Peter was a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus and has done pioneering collaborative work on HIV and infectious disease control across Africa. Over the past 25 years, as founding Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, he has led world-wide efforts to research and tackle AIDS and other threats to global health.
This will be only the second time the award has been made since its inauguration in 2006. The laureates of the first Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize, awarded in 2008, are Professor Sir Brian Greenwood, FRS, Manson Professor of Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and leading Kenyan public health advocate Professor Miriam Were.