A Ugandan woman Milly Kaggwa Nanyombi and a Kenyan Musa Ngayo have won scientific awards during the International Aids Society (IAS) conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Rome, Italy.

Nanyombi won the Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Award with her abstract, Preventing HIV infection among adolescents by addressing Cross Generational Sex (CGS) in Secondary Schools in Uganda.

The Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Prize is offered jointly by the IAS-Industry Liaison Forum and UNAIDS, and supported by the International Centre for Research on Women and the International Community of Women Living with HIV/Aids.

The US$2,000 prize is awarded to an investigator from a low-income or middle-income country whose abstract demonstrates excellence in research and/or practice that addresses women, girls and gender issues related to HIV.

According to the organisers, this prize serves to highlight the challenges faced by women and girls in this epidemic and to encourage investigators from low- and middle-income countries to pursue research in this field of scientific endeavour.
The award was presented by Elly Katabira, IAS President and Catherine Hankins, Chief Scientific Adviser, UNAIDS.

Ngayo got US$2,000 for his triumph in the IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award, which is jointly funded by the IAS and the French National Agency for Research on Aids and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS) to support young researchers who demonstrate innovation, originality and quality in the field of HIV and Aids research.

He won in the Clinical Sciences for his abstract,
Association of abnormal vaginal flora with male-to-female HIV-1 transmission among HIV-1 discordant couples in sub-Saharan Africa.

The achievement by the two Africans opens a way for scientists and researchers in the continent to pursue and challenge for these awards.

Katabira said of the awards:

“The quality of work represented by the 2011 awardees is remarkable. The IAS hopes to draw the world’s attention to these individuals and to their significant scientific accomplishments, as well as to the continued need for innovation in all of the major areas of HIV and Aids research, represented by the conference programme tracks,” he said.

IAS this year rewarded six winners of three prestigious scientific awards and apart from Nanyombi and Ngayo; the other winners are UK’s Lilanganee Telisinghe, USA’s Anandi Sheth, China’s Xu Yu and Sabine Margot Hermans of The Netherlands.