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Ghanaian doctor wins Falcon Award for Disease Elimination for work on river blindness

Professor Daniel Adjei Boakye of Ghana is one of five winners to receiveda Falcon Award for Disease Elimination this in Dubai. He will receive up to US$200,000 and technical support from The Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) to drive the elimination of river blindness in Ghana; the other winners were from Pakistan, Philippines and Yemen.

The Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination were launched in April 2021 by GLIDE, the aim being to advance the elimination of one or more of GLIDE’s four focus diseases: malaria, polio, lymphatic filariasis, and river blindness.

The Awards invited submissions from organisations in disease-endemic countries whose proposals address cross-border, cross-disease, cross-programme, or cross-sector approaches to disease elimination.

Boakye, who has devised a project to map out how river blindness is transmitted between villages in the Oti region, was announced as one of the winner by GLIDE during a Universal Health Coverage Day event at EXPO 2020 Dubai.

He will carry out a series of targeted field studies in the Oti Region to refine the multi-village model for preventing river blindness and identify the best treatment strategies for the disease.

Results from the study will also help in redefining transmission zones for other neglected tropical diseases programmes, ensuring these zones are targeted with specific interventions to accelerate the elimination of diseases.

Boakye beat 220 applicants across 44 countries to become the first African winner of the Falcon Awards. He is currently a senior technical advisor at the END Fund, based at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Ghana.

Commenting on his selection, he said: “I am delighted to have been selected as an award winner. Understanding issues around transmission zones and cross-border challenges is critical to the elimination of river blindness transmission in Africa. This partnership with GLIDE will create the impetus needed to generate data for models that provide greater clarity in resolving the challenges around river blindness elimination.”

Launched in April this year by GLIDE, the Falcon Awards aim to discover and implement innovative approaches to disease elimination which focus on eliminating one or more of GLIDE’s four focus diseases: malaria, polio, lymphatic filariasis and river blindness.

Issued by The Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE)

 

 

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