South Africa's HIV research power couple wins Lasker Award

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00:00They are known to be the power couple in the South African public health sector.

00:05Karaisha and Salim Abdul Karim have saved thousands of lives through decades of fighting the spread of infectious diseases.

00:13Getting the Lasker Award for Public Service is a top recognition for medical research.

00:18So I think it's both humbling and inspiring.

00:23Humbling because you don't think about us from Africa getting this sort of pinnacle,

00:30what's described as the Nobel Prize for science in the U.S.

00:36But inspiring, on the other hand, in how science, which was my initial dream,

00:43science can change the world and the transformative power of science

00:48being recognised and being recognised from Africa.

00:52The couple's focus on HIV followed their move to the United States in 1987.

00:57The virus was then ravaging New York.

01:00For us, when we came back to South Africa at the end of 1988,

01:04it seemed like this was going to be the next big challenge.

01:08But they were met by a government in denial about the scale of HIV-AIDS.

01:13Its poor response is estimated to have cost 2.5 million lives between 1999 and 2010.

01:20South Africa became the epicentre of the pandemic.

01:23The couple has been recognised on their work on an antiretroviral treatment

01:27that reduced the spread of the virus by 39%.

01:31They also launched research labs and trained hundreds of scientists across Africa.

01:36New infections in South Africa have dropped to 150,000 in 2023

01:42from a peak of around 520,000 20 years ago.

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