Prof Alan Fenwick was awarded Honorary Membership of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at their 61st Annual meeting 11 Nov 2012

Professor Alan Fenwick, SCI’s Director, was presented with Honorary Membership of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) during the Plenary session of the 61^st Annual meeting of the ASTMH on Sunday 11 November 2012.  This is the citation by Professor Stephen Hoffman, Past President of the ASTMH, read out at the ASTMH awards ceremony.

Dr. Alan Fenwick is Professor of Tropical Parasitology And Director, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, (SCI), Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, St. Mary’s Hospital.

Many consider Alan to have contributed more to the control of schistosomiasis in modern times than any single living individual. Throughout his career Prof. Fenwick has been at the vanguard of working to control this scourge throughout Africa. In 2002, Alan founded the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). Through his tenacity, his interpersonal skills, insightful planning, and magnificent force of will, Alan has achieved extraordinary reductions in the prevalence and intensity of schistosomiasis six African countries. To accomplish this he had to work out an innovative system of procurement for the drug praziquantel, and then work with health officers throughout Africa to provide targeted chemotherapy to school-aged children in the most remote and rural areas of these countries. The results of his quest to control schistosomiasis in the six African nations have cemented his now legendary reputation as a disease fighter. A 2004 campaign treated more than a million school-aged children  in Burkina Faso and reached a coverage rate of 96.76% of those targeted. By 2009 national coverage was achieved in Burkina and in Niger. In Uganda over 4 million children and adults have been treated by the Ministry of Health’s Ugandan Bilharzia and Worm Control Programme. The percentage of children with moderate and heavy infections has been reduced from 26.1% to below 3%. Prof. Fenwick was instrumental in helping to establish the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control.

SCI operations have touched the lives of over 100 million children in Africa through Alan’s careful planning and disease control management acumen. He has been recognized by the RSTMH with the award of the McKay medal and by the Queen with the OBE and the Queens Educational Prize. It is an honor to the ASTMH to bestow honorary membership on Alan.