Jonathan Mann Award For Health and Human Rights
The Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights is named for former head of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s global AIDS program, Jonathan Mann, who resigned to protest the lack of response from the United Nations and WHO with regard to AIDS. In 2001, the recipient was Gao Yaojie, a retired Chinese gynecologist and one of China's foremost AIDS fighters who helped poor farmers in Henan Province that were infected with H.I.V. through selling their blood at for-profit and unsanitary collection stations. Yaojie was denied permission to attend an awards ceremony in Washington with Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations as her host.
In 2008, the Mann award was to be given to Binayak Sen, a prominent Indian doctor responsible for drawing up one of the most successful community-based health-care models in India — based on the traditional mitanin, a health worker who advises the rural poor on preventive care — making health care available to many who had lacked access. He had been a vocal critic of the government's use of armed groups to push villagers out of mineral-rich forests to boost development and was jailed in April 2007 on sedition charges, including allegedly being linked to Maoist rebels and smuggling a letter for an accused Maoist prisoner he had visited. Sen denies the charges and his effort to get the award in person was bolstered by 22 Nobel laureates; he is out of jail on bail.
Read more about this topic: Global Health Council, Awards
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