Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim, a South African public health power couple, are credited with saving thousands of lives through decades of pioneering work to combat the spread of infectious diseases like HIV.
The epidemiologists, who have been married for 36 years and are both 64 years old, are worldwide recognized for their work on preventing dangerous illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and coronavirus.
On Thursday, they earned the Lasker Award for Public Service, which is considered as the US equivalent of a Nobel Prize in Science.
According to the Lasker Foundation in New York, the pair has “stemmed the course of the HIV/AIDS scourge” by establishing research facilities and training hundreds of scientists throughout Africa.
They used science to dispel AIDS myths and propaganda, the report stated.
Salim, director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research (Caprisa) in Durban on South Africa’s east coast, described the honor as a “humbling moment” and the “pinnacle of a research career” to AFP.
“Inspiring,” said Quarraisha, the centre’s scientific director, adding that it demonstrated “the transformative power of science being recognised, and being recognised from Africa.”
The duo focused on HIV after moving to the United States in 1987 to pursue their master’s degrees at Columbia University. HIV, first detected in 1981, was devastating New York.
HIV explosion
“You couldn’t spend a day without discussing HIV in New York,” recalled Salim. When the couple returned home to South Africa, it was the “next big challenge”, he said.
The country went on to record some of the highest numbers of infections in the world, becoming an epicentre of a pandemic that has claimed around 42 million lives globally, including about 3.9 million in South Africa since 1999, according to UNAIDS.
“It was in our communities, in our populations. We were trying to change behaviour around s*x at a time when people didn’t talk very easily about s*x, when the apartheid state was also trying to control who you had s*x with,” said Quarraisha.
After the racially segregationist apartheid system ended in 1994, she was appointed national AIDS control programme director.
But the new government was in denial about the scale of HIV/AIDS and its poor response is estimated to have cost 2.5 million lives between 1999 and 2010, according to UNAIDS.
“They defined approaches to treat common co-infections of HIV and tuberculosis, and after five years, these deaths decreased by over 50 percent.”
One of Caprisa’s achievements was the pioneering of a topical gel to protect women from infection.
Leading causes for new infections are violence against women, young women in relationships with older men and transactional s*x, Quarraisha said.
–‘Complementary perspectives’
“If I go to the shopping mall now… people will come up to me and say, ‘Thank you very much, professor’,” he said.
Both born in the KwaZulu-Natal province, the couple prioritise time with their three children but have no plans to hang up their lab coats.
“When we work together, as my husband and I show, we bring different but complementary perspectives,” she said. “We are able to raise the science to levels that you can’t individually do.”
“We are now working on some new strategies to provide long-term prevention against HIV,” Salim said.
