The Mectizan Donation Program wishes to congratulate the recipients of the first annual Mectizan Award.
The winners of the Mectizan Award were announced on 5 September 2002 in Tanzania during the 15th Anniversary Celebration. The recipients, Mr. Chukwu Okoronkwo and Dr. Brian O.L. Duke, received awards for their outstanding contributions to the control of onchocerciasis.
National/International Level Award
Dr. Brian O.L. Duke received the international level award. Dr. Duke has worked on onchocerciasis for more than 40 years, and pioneered some of the early studies on the disease. He was a key player during the planning stages for mass distribution of Mectizan. The following is an excerpt from Dr. Duke’s acceptance speech:
“… some eight years after the end of the Second World War, onchocerciasis was still a rather obscure disease appearing in small print at the back of the textbooks on tropical medicine, and not very much was known about its importance. It so happened that a number of independent research teams were then established, in Upper Volta, Cameroon and in East Africa to make a thorough investigation of the epidemiology, entomology and socio-economic consequences of this disease. Over the next 15-20 years a great deal was learned about the disease, and the devastating effects of River Blindness, causing desertion of fertile riverine land and impeding socio-economic development, were revealed.
The results of this research work led, in 1969, to the Tunis meeting (involving WHO, the OCCGE and United States Agency for International Development) and to the decision to set up the multi-country Onchocerciasis Control Programme in the Volta River Basin (OCP) in 1974. This programme, which depended on the regular and widespread aerial applications of rapidly biodegradable insecticides to the riverine breeding sites of the insect vector, Simulium damnosum, and which was supported by a vital operational research element, was a great success. It virtually stopped transmission over a huge area. Children born after the programme started remained uninfected and free from the threat of blindness. There were enormous socio-economic benefits and development of previously-deserted land in the area; but, unfortunately, many of those people already infected went on to go blind because no drug suitable for large-scale rural use was available.
At that time there were several drugs, notably diethylcarbamazine (DEC), that could kill the microfilariae, but they all killed these parasites in situ and thus excited severe and sometimes devastating reactions in the skin and eye, which prevented their use on a large scale. Then, suddenly out of the blue from Merck*, came a new and different microfilaricide, namely ivermectin or Mectizan . This one merely paralysed the microfilariae in the skin and they were then swept into the lymphatic system and therein destroyed, without much reaction, in the same way as the body deals with many other foreign invaders. It could thus be used for mass treatment.
Merck then had another brilliant idea. Realising that the millions of rural people with onchocerciasis in Africa and Latin America would be far too poor to buy their drug, they decided to start the Mectizan Donation Program, providing the drug free wherever it was needed in endemic countries and for as long as necessary….”
Community/District Level Award
Mr. Chukwu Okoronkwo of the Ministry of Health and NGDO Coalition in Nigeria received the Community/District level award. Mr. Okoronkwo was nominated for the award for his commitment to onchocerciasis control in Nigeria. He developed the “Nigeria Onchocerciasis News” newsletter and is known for his census validation work and its application in obtaining Nigeria’s ultimate treatment goal. In response to receiving the award Mr. Okoronkwo said:
“I wish to thank Merck & Co. for the honour bestowed on me in selecting me as one of the inaugural winners of The Merck Award. My appreciation also goes to all those who nominated me for the award.
I have never felt that I was doing anything extraordinary. I have been guided by one principle: ‘whatever your hands find to do, do it to your utmost ability as unto God, and not to man only’. I have therefore just been trying to do what I believe is right and necessary.
This award will no doubt send positive signals to many who have been putting in their best but feel that their efforts are not being appreciated or recognised. For me it is an encouragement to keep on working.”
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*Merck & Co., Inc. is known as MSD outside Canada and the United States