Saving young lives by the million

Professor Ruth Bishop, 2013 CSL Florey Medallist

By their third birthday, just about every child in the world has had a rotavirus infection. Every day about 1200 children die from it; half a million children every year. That’s changing. We’re fighting back thanks to a discovery made in 1973 by a quiet Melbourne researcher—this year’s winner of the 2013 CSL Florey Medal.

That was when Ruth Bishop, Brian Ruck, Geoffrey Davidson and Ian Holmes at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne’s microbiology department found a virus, now known as rotavirus. Until the middle of the last decade, it put about 10,000 Australian children in hospital each year with acute gastroenteritis. In the next decade, as a direct result of their research, millions of young lives will be saved.

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Presentation 8.30pm, Wednesday 30 October, in the Mural Hall, Parliament House, Canberra

HD Australian and international vision available

Because of the rotavirus Ruth Bishop found in Melbourne babies in 1973:

• 10,000 Australian kids won’t go to hospital this year
• half a million young lives could  be saved every year as the Gates Foundation and GAVI roll out rotavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest 30 countries by 2015
• a new Australian rotavirus vaccine is being trialled in New Zealand and Indonesia.

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Images and videos for use in reporting on Ruth Bishop, winner of the 2013 CSL Florey Medal, with attribution.

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Australian bionic ear pioneer Professor Graeme Clark will receive the CSL Florey Medal tonight in the presence of 90 of his peers at the 2011 Association of Australian Medical Research Institute’s annual dinner in the Mural Hall at Parliament House Canberra.

High resolution images of Graham Clark can be found here. [continue reading…]

Here are photos, for press use, of the CSL Florey medal winner for 2011. Videos and images of the presentation will be available after Monday.

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